


Seven Fourteen Northbound

by therudestflower



Series: The Commuter AU [3]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: (pot), Alternate Universe - Human, Bagels, Commuting!, F/M, Fictional Chicagoland, Food Everything, Food Issues, Food Metaphors, Gen, M/M, Mental Illness, Recovery, Recreational Drug Use, alternative universe, some canon elements, young adulthood
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-09
Updated: 2018-12-15
Packaged: 2019-07-10 06:30:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 53,841
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15943706
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/therudestflower/pseuds/therudestflower
Summary: He went back the only available seat next to curly haired guy. Stiles subtly cleared his throat. The guy was sitting in the aisle seat, wearing earbuds, looking at his phone, and his blue backpack was on the seat next to him. The only way it could be more clear that a seatmate was unwelcome was if he physically removed the window seat from the train.And, judging by the glare he was shooting Stiles, that option hadn't been ruled out entirely."Can I sit here?"The guy pulled out one earbud, "What?" he asked."Can I sit here?" Stiles repeated. The guy didn't move, and Stiles mouth ran off without him. "You know, common courtesy, shared space. All that."





	1. New Riders

Places Stiles Has Lived in His Short Years on This Temporarily Green Earth:

  1. Beacon Hills, CA
  2. Grinnell, Iowa
  3. Amsterdam
  4. Sweden
  5. Beacon Hills, CA
  6. Cambridge, MA
  7. Austin, TX
  8. Boulder, CO


  1. Chicago, IL



 

Bags Stiles Took with Him to Chicago:

  1. A way too cool purple duffle bag



 

Knife fights he witnessed on the Blue Train on the way to Scotts' Apartment:

  1. "Hey! Hey! Hey! That's my seat! Back the fuck up off me!"



 

How Often That Happens According to Scott:

  1. "Like not _all_ the time"



Scott, predictably, was 110% on board with Stiles coming to visit for an unspecified amount of time with unspecified reasons. Stiles invited himself via text two days ago and Scott replied ten minutes later with two dozen gasping monkey emojis.

 

That wasn't that weird though, because Scott would have had about the same response if their high school Lacrosse coach asked him for money. Frankly, Stiles was just curious to see how Scott had managed not to die after six years of living in America's Murder City. Like, Stiles was actually surprised when Scott stayed on the other side of the el car instead of throwing himself in the middle of the aforementioned knife fight.

 

Apparently, they'd both grown up some.

 

"I live in a different apartment than the last time you were here," Scott said, fiddling with keys outside. They were standing on the sidewalk in front of a shuttered salon, and Scott eventually found the keys to get through two security doors to get to his apartment upstairs. "This place is worse, if I'm telling the truth. But it's further from Easton and that's good. It's quieter."

 

It was quiet, way quieter than the campus apartments Scott had lived in before. March was still the dead of winter in Chicago and the snow falling through the streetlights made the strip mall across the street look like the middle of the snow globe.

 

He got them through the gates and lead Stiles into a second-floor apartment. "This is it!"

 

The apartment looked about how Stiles expected, based on their semiweekly Skype hangouts. The front door lead into a narrow hallway with a framed poster of the 1960 cover of "To Kill a Mockingbird" and way too many pairs of athletic shoes lined up against the wall. The hall led to a small living room with a leather couch and two velour armchairs. Scott still had the same busted up 30 inch TV he bought in high school. The kitchen was almost larger than the living room and was--of course--overcrowded with Stiles' favorite foods that Scott had no doubt been preparing and freezing over the past two weeks.

 

It wasn't a shithole, but it wasn't suited for more than one person at a time. Stiles mentally noted that his indefinite couch crashing would become super annoying within a few weeks. No big deal.

 

Of course, there weren't _no_ surprises. Like the girl wearing bluetooth earbuds who was doing yoga in the middle of the living room. She saw them in the reflection of the window and turned around, pulling the earbuds out of her ears and smiling. "Oh, hi. You're Stiles right?"

 

Jesus, she was unbelievably gorgeous. If Stiles wasn't sure beyond a shadow of a doubt that this was Allison--the star of Scott's Instagram--he would be stumbling over himself trying to impress her. He hadn’t met Allison yet. She and Scott only started dating a few months ago, but if his rapid-fire snaps and constant coupled Instagram photos were to be believed, they were deeply in love.

 

"Yes, hi. I'm the guy who's going to steal your boyfriend for a bit. If you don't mind."

 

"Keep him as long as you like," Allison said easily. "I took the food out of the oven on time, so you can't make any more jokes about me going into a trance. I've gotta shower, but I'll be out in sec." She kissed Scott quickly and moved past him into the bedroom. Stiles resisted the urge to look in after her, just to see if the bedroom looked the same as it did over Skype.

 

"Sorry, I should have warned you she was here," Scott said. He was looking at Stiles in a measured way, like he was trying to figure out if this was going to cause a meltdown. A casual quick look with lowered eyebrows and just the smallest head tilt. The Scott McCall Cares look. That look was 50% of the reason it had taken him so long to land in Chicago.

 

But Stiles was three years removed from when that was the only look Scott gave him, so he could handle it.

 

"Hey, she's your girlfriend. If I cared when she visited you this whole 'me crashing on your couch' thing would be way awkward." Stiles dropped his duffle bag by the couch.

 

Being around Scott somehow brought back the explosions of good with-my-best-friend feelings that he got all the time around Scott. Even the weird loud way Scott shut kitchen cabinets brought back memories.

 

"Yeah. Well, actually I should tell you that Allison is actually moving in in a few months? Her roommate wanted her girlfriend to move in to their place, and she and I had been talking about moving in together. So it just kind of happened. But that won't be for _months._ "

 

The look was back. God, Scott should be going into social work throwing around that look like he was. There was no place for a face like Scott's in law school.

 

"Yeah, I remember your seven text explanation. Don’t worry. You want to live with your girlfriend. Hell, I'd want to live with her too if she was my girlfriend. I didn't think I was moving in with you."

 

Over dinner (Hamburger helper casserole and cornbread hell yeah) he explained why he was in Chicago to Allison. It was the same speech he'd given his Dad and psychiatrist so it was getting to be old hat.

 

"Basically I do contract work. I figured out how to do a lot of coding and database work in college, so when smaller companies or non-profits have problems they can't figure out with their back of house I come in."

 

"I know what contracting is," Allison said lightly. Stiles looked at Scott to see if he should conclude that Allison hated him, but Scott subtly waved his hand in a way that said "don't worry."

 

"Right. Well, they hire me because I'm cheap as hell and I'm fine with that because I'm fast. And as a contractor, it doesn't matter where I live because as long as there's a need for my skills somewhere I can live there."

 

"I understand that, I'm just curious about why you left Colorado. Scott told me that before that you were in Austin and you were in Europe for a while. If I could get away with staying in Europe I would."

 

"I guess I couldn't get away with it. But anyway, because I can get away with living anywhere why wouldn't I? I'm young. I'm healthy. I'm just wasting my time if I put down my roots somewhere. If I land somewhere and it's amazing I'll know and I'll stay there and I won't be bored. Boulder was cool buy I got bored and didn't have a lease so boom. Visited my dad for a few weeks and now I'm here."

 

Allison made a "hmmmm" sound and helped herself to another piece of cornbread. Stiles and Scott exchanged looks again.

 

"Also, Stiles hasn't ever had deep dish pizza," Scott joked.

 

"Well we'll fix that, won't we?" Allison said. She switched the topic of conversation to the impending teachers strike and Stiles relaxed enough to check his phone. His dad had texted him again.

 

Was he fine? Did he have enough money? If he wanted a ticket home that could be arranged?

 

He should tell Dad the pizza thing. That would set his mind at ease no problem.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

After a few weeks Stiles got a gig that is unbelievably, unreasonably and just ungodly far from Scott's apartment. He'd originally focused his search on downtown Chicago, aka the Loop—Stiles was getting savvy to the lingo. But shockingly the Chicago economy wasn't friendly to young contractors with Anthropology degrees. Allison introduced him to her boss at the refugee resource agency. That went absolutely nowhere except to make Stiles more sure that Allison didn't hate him.

 

"What do you do here?" Stiles asked her over coffee afterward. "I mean, I get the whole thing that you're getting these families integrated into American society. But what do you do, specifically."

 

"I'm the education liaison," Allison said, "I help families get their kids registered in schools. Over the summer almost all I did was find doctors to give the kids their back to school physicals. Right now my big focus is helping families with older children find high schools and middle schools for next year." She said it like it was absolutely nothing. She bought bottles of chocolate milk to give to the family she was going to meet. She was world's biggest badass.

 

Meanwhile, Scott was crushing it in Easton's law school. He volunteered at Allison's agency and was the president of a student organization dedicated to providing pro-bono services around Chicago.

 

Allison and Scott were exactly the kind of people Liberal Arts colleges hoped to spit out. Both of them were going straight to heaven.

 

Besides being unemployed, March was an excellent time to come to Chicago. All anyone could talk about was the record low temperatures and the snowstorms. Whenever Scott introduced him to one of his Law School friends as a friend from California they fixed him with uniform smug looks and asked "You liking this weather?"

 

As promised he called Dad once a day.

 

"It's seventy-five degrees here today," Dad said. Stiles could tell he was on speakerphone and Dad was driving in his cruiser. "Just _beautiful._ I'm thinking of pulling out the short sleeve uniform."

 

"Alright, just try not to flash too much arm, Dad. You could cause a car crash."

 

"What kind of coat do you have? Are you warm enough? It's colder there than it was in Boulder."

 

"Yeah dad, I bought a good coat before I left Colorado. My frontal lobe finally kicked in."

 

"Miracles happen every day. And boots?"

 

"My hiking boots are waterproof."

 

"Hiking boots?"

 

"Caitlin's doing.

 

"Ah. Have you had the chance to look up my friend in the Chicago PD? He might have a line on some work for you."

 

"No, right now I'm pretty much focused on not doing anything except find the perfect cup of coffee."

 

Which was pretty true. Everywhere he lived, his first order of business was finding a coffee shop to work in. It had to have excellent coffee and excellent bagels and not too many kids after 3:00. While Allison and Scott were at work he trudged through the streets, trying to find a coffee shop he could work in that wasn't terrible or Starbucks. He started his search by getting off random el stops and wandering around until a horrified Allison sat down with a map of the el system and circled stops that weren't "idiotic" to get off on.

 

Two weeks in he found a cafe called Jeanne's. The coffee was just ok but the bagels were soft and salty and unbelievable. With a mix of chalkboard signs and power outlets, Stiles could tell that it was a mom and pop that had be bought out but the owners wanted to keep the family vibe. Stiles hunkered down in a back corner and had the first not-terrible idea he'd had in weeks: isitcolderinantarcticorchicago.com. It took about twenty minutes to code and with a small ad in the corner Stiles could see it bringing in about 20 cents a year.

 

But it wasn't terrible.

 

The answer on the website was almost always Chicago, but Stiles still took the 20 minute train ride south to Jeanne's every day. He was there when Caitlin texted him that she'd given his name to a friend of her Dad's in HR at a company whose name she couldn't remember and they'd be calling him today. Most of Stiles' work had been with young startups with more money than they knew what to do with and not enough sense to figure out how to open a file. The kind of places that definitely do not have HR guys.

 

The company that Caitlin can't remember the name of turns out to be Slate, the largest kitchen appliance manufacturer in the Midwest. The HR guy tells Stiles that four times in their ten-minute conversation. Stiles launches into his spiel about what programs he can work with and where he's worked before but HR guy doesn't give a shit about that.

 

"We need someone to take all the onboarding work our employees have done and put it on the computer so we can look it up. Is that something you can do?"

 

It's something any high school junior should be able to do. After a few questions, Stiles figures out that the guys who were supposed to be doing it fucked it up. It's maybe a couple weeks work. Mind numbing work that a six-year-old could do but

 

Stiles quotes an hourly rate six dollars above what he usually charges. HR guy doesn't even pause before accepting it. He could have gone higher; corporations are just bigger and stupider startups. He asks about setting up a phone call with IT to get access on his laptop when HR guy cuts in.

 

"We need you here. You need to be in the office in front of the files. Is that going to be a problem?"

 

Which is _super_ inideal but Stiles is only doing this crap job until a cooler one comes along so it's fine until he hangs up on HR guy and looks up where the Slate headquarters are.

 

And, once again, is unbelievably, unreasonably and just ungodly far from Scott's apartment.

 

"Oh, Allison went to high school near Lake Wind," Scott said, scrolling through Slate's Wikipedia page.

 

"No I didn't," Allison said from the kitchen, sounding affronted. "I lived in Briarwood. Lake Wind is a corporate village. Briarwood is a small city. We had a Borders."

 

As far as Stiles can tell there's not much of a difference. Briarwood is a forty-five minute train ride from the commuter train stops two blocks away. And Lake Wind is an hour away and starting Monday Stiles has to be in Lake Wood at 8:30 AM every day.

 

Which means that come Monday Stiles is standing in the fucking -20 F weather on a train platform at 7:11 AM full on praying that he is standing on the platform that goes away from the Loop instead of towards it. Scott got up early and insisted on coming to the platform with him.

 

"Remember all-nighters?" Scott yawned, "This feels like an all-nighter."

 

The sky was grey, lit up the way his bedroom at home got when he opened the door and let the hallway light do it's best to light up the room. They were standing under a heated lamp on the train platform, which seemed to be working exactly not at all. Most of the chill was being blocked by the crowd of commuters who looked annoyingly unexhausted, more resigned to their terrible schedules.

 

"Yeah, I obviously remember all-nighters." Stiles was too annoyed to be more clever. "I'm kind of the master of them if you remember. If there was an award for all-nighters I would be the king." Scott frowned, but a yawn tore through his "I am Scott McCall and I care about your wellbeing" face. "Dude, go home. You don't have class for another six hours."

 

"No way, I've got your back like I said. Riding new transit is tricky. During my freshman year I got on the wrong el line and ended up in Rosemont at like two in the morning! But uh, I probably won't do this again. It's awful out here."

 

It was, in fact, awful out here. At the moment Stiles was quietly freaking out over the fact that hew as going to have to do this every day until he found a better job. He wasn't even hurting for money that bad, but the past few weeks had involved way too much time for Stiles to be alone and let his thoughts spin out. Spinning Stiles led to dangerous places if he didn't find something to wedge in the gears and stop them.

 

"Any chance I'll end up in Rosemont? That indoor skydiving place has been calling my name." Stiles asked.

 

Scott shook his head. He reached into his jacket and provided a paper copy of the Metra schedule, which he had already given Stiles two of. "Nah, worse. If you fall asleep on this train you'll end up in Wisconsin, so stay sharp. I haven't been on the Metra too much, but Allison takes it all the time to visit her dad. She said the best thing to do is find a seat on the upper deck because those are single passenger seats. But I don't think it really matters if you need to sit next to someone, most people are pretty cool."

 

Six years of living in one of the most violent cities in America hadn't lessened Scott's love affair with humanity in any way. It was a miracle Scott hadn't been mugged more than those two times. When Scott decided to go to Easton for college, Stiles' dad had sat him down to talk about city living. "Chicago isn't Beacon Hills," Dad had said, "You'll have to be prepared for a different chance of violence as you go about your day to day life."

 

Which was pretty hilarious, considering all the shit they went through in high school.

 

Still, Scott believed everyone was a potential friend, especially random 7:14 AM Metra passengers. He threw a house party a few days ago for his fellow law students and strung up _streamers_ like he was welcoming them back from war. Scott slung his arm around anyone near him and asked about their pets like it wasn't obvious that they were all high-strung fucking assholes who monologued about how they were going to shake up the system with their mediocre LSAT scores and moxie.

 

Allison parked herself in the kitchen until the party ended. She pretended to text, but Stiles could see she was listening to everyone around them. "Has he always been like this?" she asked, gesturing towards where Scott was showing a girl in a blazer how to dab.

 

"He used to be worse," Stiles said, even though it wasn't true. It seemed like the more bad people Scott encountered the more blind faith he threw onto the world.

 

"Yeah, maybe I'll meet my future wife," Stiles said. Scott grinned. "Maybe I'll meet my new best friend, right here today on this train."

 

"Well don't meet your new best friend, okay?" Scott said. The whistle blew, and the people on the platform started inching towards the yellow line at the edge of the platform. "If you see anyone who looks like they're going to be your new best friend, walk the other way."

 

The train squealed into the platform and came to a noisy stop. Stiles felt his jacket pockets for his phone and wallet, and felt along the latches of his laptop bag to make sure it was closed.

 

Scott asked for a hug and Stiles responded by giving him the finger and forcing himself to join the crowd boarding the train. The bodies around him pushed at this shoulders and Stiles followed the crowd into a full train car. Every seat was full; two people to a seat and so were the single seats on the upper deck. How could the train be so full at 7:14 AM in the morning? Allison said he'd have his pick of seats, and could put his backpack down to stop someone from sitting next to him. Did everyone in the world work for Slate? Jesus. He followed a guy with a military haircut through a narrow door that connected to another train car. The next car was just as packed, but Stiles could see a few openings in the rows and rows of seats. The guy in front of him sat down right away next to a woman talking on her phone quietly in Polish—Stiles took a minute to be happy that he still recognized Polish.

 

Stiles walked through the next car and saw that the only available seat was a window seat next to a guy with curly hair and white headphones. He tried to walk to the next car but the door connecting to two cars was locked For a minute Stiles stood in the entryway of the train car and considered just standing here until the train got to Lake Wood. Or Wisconsin. But that would be weird.

 

He went back the only available seat next to a curly haired guy. He was about Stiles' age, and while young white men were far more likely to be serial killers than the general population, like all people they were relatively unlikely to engage in random acts of public violence. So Stiles walked up to him and subtly cleared his throat. The guy was sitting in the aisle seat, wearing earbuds, looking at his phone, and his blue backpack was on the seat next to him. The only way it could be more clear that a seatmate was unwelcome was if he physically removed the window seat from the train.

 

And, judging by the glare he was shooting Stiles, that option hadn't been ruled out entirely. Stiles felt for the latches on his bag and fought the urge around to see if another seat had mysteriously become available.

 

"Can I sit here?"

 

The guy pulled out one earbud, "What?" he asked.

 

"Can I sit here?" Stiles repeated. The guy didn't move, and Stiles mouth ran off without him. "You know, common courtesy, shared space. All that."

 

He rolled his eyes, but stood up, taking his backpack with him and stepped back. It took Stiles a minute to realize he was waiting for Stiles to get into the window seat. Stiles grinned at him and sat down before he changed his mind. "Whoa, the window seat. People pay extra for this on airplanes and you just gave it up." The guy sat back down in the aisle seat and put his earbuds back in.

 

Stiles felt for his phone and wallet in his jacket, and then turned his attention out the window. They were still in "Chicago proper", as Allison liked to call it, but the buildings were getting lower and more spaced out. The train stopped a twice before a conductor came to the train car called, “New riders, new riders!” and stopped in front of Stiles, who was, in fact, a new rider.

 

It took him forever to get his wallet open, and then he didn't give the conductor enough money. The whole thing probably took two seconds but seemed to last forever, especially with the way the guy next to him kept looking at Stiles' hands. Instead of going through the song and dance of buying a ticket at 7:18 AM on a moving train, he showed the conductor a laminated card which he then clipped into the little slot on the back of the seat in front of him. Stiles clipped his paper ticket into the spot next to that.

 

"Where do I get one of those?"

 

"At the station," the guy said.

 

"Like any station? Do they come laminated? Because that looks totally official. The station I was at this morning was closed, like doors locked and I could see that there was a coffee shop inside so it was basically torture."

 

"Is this your first time on the train?" he asked, sounding exhausted with Stiles in a way that took most people an hour to reach.

 

"Oh drat, I was trying to seem seasoned"

 

Sitting next to him the way they were, Stiles couldn't see the guy's face without turning to look at him like a creep, but Stiles could tell he was at least a little amused "The one in Lake Wood will be open. This is a monthly pass. It pays for itself if you ride more than 30 times a month. So if you're taking it every day you should get it."

 

"Now why didn't Scott tell me about _that._ That is useful information. You provide useful information."

 

The guy didn't respond, just turned up the sound in his headphones loud enough that Stiles could hear that it was someone talking, he wasn’t even listening to music.

 

After another twenty minutes, his seatmate got off at the Briarwood stop. Stiles looked out the window, noting the blocks and blocks of squat yellow brick houses. Ten minutes later Stiles hustled off the train at the Lake Wood stop. The ticket station was open, but Stiles figured he was not going to be around long enough to need a monthly pass. Buying one would be bad luck.

 

Slate the building turned out not to be a building. It was an entire gated campus two blocks away from the train stop. Stiles followed the crowd of commuters into the building and immediately noticed hat his green button up and slacks was still way underdressed.

 

The workday was nothing but getting lost and taking a thousand years to find who his supervisor was supposed to be. Between being lost as shit and watching stupid orientation videos Stiles doesn't see the files he was supposed to do data entry for until 3:00 PM.

 

His supervisor was a dude named Ellison in his 50's who hadn't seemed to notice that he has an entry level position in HR. "No trouble for you, right?" he asked, gesturing to the filing cabinets that are full to the brim with paperwork.

 

"It's all of these?" Stiles asked He'd gotten into the employee database and there was no record of anyone completed any trainings for the last seven years.

 

"No problem for you," Ellison said confidently.

 

"This is going to take months," Stiles said, "You should hire more people."

 

"No rush," Ellison said, "We rather not have too many cooks to mess it up again."

 

"Whoever you had doing this before was totally negligent. You can't really screw up data entry unless you don't do it. If you just hire two more people I can supervise it and we'll get it done way faster."

 

"No rush," Ellison repeated.

 

So the Slate job is total bullshit but in the two hours Stiles spent setting up the spreadsheets he'll need he doesn't get into a single thinking spiral. His psychiatrist and Dad would be over the moon about it. So after sending Malia a few snaps about his new life as a corporate stooge, he leaves with the satisfaction of a job well fucking done. He buys a monthly pass at the train station on his way home.

 

At the very least train guy will be impressed by how competent he now is at riding the Metra.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading this piece that's been in the works for literal years! It is set in a highly fictional Chicagoland and is a hard AU, both of which is already evident. Thank you to Goddess of Birth for reading it for those literal years and being super supportive all the time!! 
> 
> Comments are SO APPRECIATED!


	2. Sleeping Against the Sun

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Posting a day early because I'm bored! Brief pot smoking ahead.

Night Baker Schedule March 20th-26th

Monday  
Isaac 10:30 PM(su)-6:30 AM  
Phoenix 10:30 PM (su)-3:30 AM (TRAINING)  
Tuesday:  
Isaac 10:30 PM(mo)-6:30 AM  
Phoenix 10:30 PM (mo)-3:30 AM (TRAINING)  
Wednesday:  
Isaac 10:30 PM(tu)-6:30 AM  
Thursday:  
Isaac 10:30 PM(wed)-6:30 AM  
Friday:  
Isaac 10:30 PM(thu)-6:30 AM  
Saturday:  
Darius 11:30 PM(fri)-7:30 AM  
Sunday:  
Darius 11:30(sa)-7:30 AM

 

* * *

 

Having worked the night shift on and off since he was fourteen, Isaac was used to all his days melding together. He felt other people’s days end in the middle of shifts and start when he was sitting on a train, desperate to be home and asleep. Most of the time he was able to ward people off from sitting next to him.

He only let someone sit next to him today because he was too tired to fight very hard. It wasn’t as bad as he expected, especially since he ignored the guy for the most part. He was capped out of interacting with idiots after the night he had.

It only took two years for Isaac to become the senior baker in Jeanne's Chicago district. That honor did not come with a pay raise, but it did mean he got stuck training all the new bakers in the district. For the past week he'd been dealing with a nineteen year old who made Isaac feel he was forty years old.

Within an hour of working with Phoenix, Isaac knew more about him than he knew about his own father.

Phoenix was born in Carbondale but he grew up in Pilsen. Where was Isaac from? Phoenix was sure he'd heard of it. From where? Is that on Google maps? Phoenix was going to community college and he wanted a job that wouldn't interfere with his class schedule so this was perfect. Phoenix had had a job before, he lifeguarded at the public pool. It wasn't easy. Phoenix was feeling so tired, how did Isaac do this every day? Phoenix was a big deal on x-box live. Phoenix lived with his mom and step-mom and they were amazing. How do you know how much bread to make? How do you know when to take the cookies out of the oven? Oh my god Phoenix was so tired oh my god how would he do this every day?

Having trainees was annoying, even when they weren't immature little kids. After two years Isaac could work without thinking. He queued up a series of podcasts before every shift. If the shift went right, in the morning the only proof that that he was there was the shelves of baked goods and whatever useless trivia he retained from the podcasts. When a trainee was there he had to play babysitter while doing damage control all night.

At 2:30 Phoenix started crying into a pile of dough. Isaac wanted yank him away from his prep table and throw him out of the kitchen. It was clear that Phoenix wasn't coming back. The least he could do was leave an hour early so Isaac could actually get work done.

"I'm sorry," Phoenix said, sniffing pathetically. "I just don't think this is for me. I don't know how they expect anyone to do this. I don't know how to do this. It's not human."

Isaac scrolled through his brain trying to figure how what the correct response was. He knew that Allison or Chris would pull out a motivational but honest speech. The best he could do was honest.

"The third shift is bad for most people."

"But you like it?"

Isaac thought of the graveyard and O’Hare and the Jewel and Jeanne’s and sleeping against the sun.

"I'm good at it."

An hour later Phoenix put on his little kid backpack and promised Isaac he'd be back tomorrow night. "I'm going to give this my very best," he said seriously. Isaac was too occupied figuring out how to get a full nights work done in three hours to respond. Later he hoped that the brush off would be enough to tip Phoenix towards not coming back.

 

* * *

 

 

"Hey, good you're home listen--oh shit you're asleep!"

Before he opened his eyes Isaac could tell his in the living room. It smelled like Erica's beeswax candles and the couch he and Boyd carefully picked out at the rent-a-center is poking into his back. He opened his eyes to Erica shedding her coat and boots, smiling sheepishly.

Isaac groped for his phone. 5:46 PM. Fuck. He sat up. "I overslept." His lace up boots were still heavy on his feet which has never been a good sign to wake up to.

"You've been there all day, by the way," Erica said, "I was making my smoothie when you got home and you literally were like 'coat up, bag down then zoink' you crashed on the couch You never took your shoes off. It was high tragedy."

Isaac got up and followed "Where's my bag?"

"It's outside your room. I did go inside it because I knew there were bagels there. Inside the bag of course, not your room. God only knows the meltdown that would jumpstart." Isaac was too occupied digging sleep out of his eyes to glare at Erica.

"But you were willing to go inside my bag," Isaac said, as he went down the hall and confirmed his bag was sitting outside his room and had everything he'd left inside it except the bagels. He must have been overly tired if he'd fallen asleep before securing his stuff.

He went inside his room and put his backpack in it’s designated corner. His room was the smallest of the three in their house, a relic from when he was the last to move in and had the least cash for rent. What made it tolerable was the glass door that took up an entire wall and led to the backyard. Isaac pulled the curtains closed to change into a new set of jeans and a clean sweater that smelled like the lavender fabric softener Erica’s mom had dropped off. He brought a sleeve to his nose and inhaled deeply.

He was going to be okay.

Even though sleeping in was something that lazy, ungrateful, spoiled idiots did, he wasn’t the worst person in the world for doing it.

He just wouldn’t go to the gym, no one would die.

Probably.

He went back into the kitchen where Erica picked up the conversation about going through his bag like he’d never left.

"I know that's against your moral code, but you can't pass out before taking out the bagels and expect me not to go for them," Erica said like no one could ever fault her logic. She was already pulling a bag of frozen bagels out of the freezer.

"Do you want one?"

"I do not." Despite spending a third of his life making bagels, Isaac hadn’t eaten one in years. They were dangerously empty of nutrients.

Even though they were a bad food, Erica was always awake when he got home, standing in the kitchen waiting with the cream cheese out for the bag of bagels that he brought home from Jeanne's. Whenever Boyd got to questioning why Isaac worked still overnight as the Jeanne's baker she cut him off whispering "Stop trying to sabotage our bagel supply."

Isaac never ate when he got home from work, but he always sat with Erica for a while before taking a shower. His room had blackout curtains he rarely used because one of the only things about his brain that didn't fully suck was that he could fall asleep whenever he needed to. He usually woke up at three with enough time to go to the gym and get home when Erica did. Sometimes he hung out with her, and Boyd when he was home.

Sometimes he met up with someone from tinder or grindr before bailing at ten with the most ironclad excuse: he had to go to work.

He liked to think his routine was why he'd been able to get away with working overnight on and off for eight years without any real health effects. To hear Chris tell it he should have died from a perforated stomach ulcer in all Jewel stock room years ago.

Sleeping in on the couch and leaving his stuff lying around was a break in routine that Isaac couldn't afford on a Monday. While Erica desfrosted the bagel in the microwave Isaac got to work reheating Saturday's stir fry on the stovetop. He could skip the gym one day to stay on his routine of eating dinner with Erica. They ate on the couch--their table was overloaded with Erica's wax and candles.

They ate in easy silence until Isaac couldn't help asking, "Why did you go into my backpack when half our freezer is Jeanne's food?"

"You’re mad?” Erica asked.

"No. I just think it's stupid."

"Fresh bagels are for breakfast and lunch, frozen bagels are for dinner," she declared.

"That's stupid."

Erica sighed over dramatically. "Note taken." There was no way she was actually annoyed, and he wasn't either really. She took their plates kitchen to put their plates in the sink. She came out with the Hello Kitty bag she kept her pot in.

"Let's hotbox my epilepsy medication in your car."

Isaac's useless car was rusted up a 1992 Ford Explorer that Boyd once described as "the ultimate evidence that Isaac was supposed to be a redneck." When his license was suspended almost four months ago he drove it into their backyard where it had been parked since, on blocks. Boyd described that move as "the further evidence that Isaac was supposed to be a redneck."

Since then he and Erica hotboxed the car a few times a week. As long as they got the heat going--the car worked fine--and they kept their coats on it was as good a place as any. It only took a few passes for Isaac to start feeling it. Erica climbed over the seat and lay down in the back.

"I can feel my seizures slipping away. True miracles are occurring here." She passed the joint up front.

"Mine too," Isaac said. "I bet I won't have a seizure today."

"Or next week."

"Or ever."

"You seem less like your head is about to fall off," Erica said.

Isaac twisted to look at her. He pressed his face against the headrest. It felt fucking amazing. "That's just the drugs talking. My head could fall off any minute."

"Oh medical marijuana doesn't treat your head falling off disease?"

"Seems it doesn't."

"Such a shame. We should ask future doctor Vernon Milton Boyd to find a cure." They sat quietly for a few minutes before Erica suddenly sat up. "Do you want to hear about the dog hoarders I showed a five bedroom unit to today? I'm having inner turmoil over whether to call animal control."

He kept his face pressed against the headrest and listened to Erica's stories about her workday. Erica lived in a world where eye contact with a stranger on the paratransit bus could spin out into a twenty-minute mystery story. She loved telling stories and Isaac had an easier time listening when he was high.

“What about you,” she asked when Isaac probably stopped responding correctly. “How was your yesterday?”

He briefly told her about Phoenix and capped it off with, “And someone sat next to me on the train.”

Erica gasped theatrically then laughed at herself. “Someone sat next to you on public transit? Did they know that you are a white man who deserves and entire seat to himself?”

“Shut up,” Isaac said, “It was still annoying.”

“Where they hot at least?”

Isaac thought back on the guy who sat next to him. He only briefly looked at him, but he actually was hot. He had wild brown hair and his cheeks were red from the cold and he had these freckles or moles on his face that—

Okay maybe he looked at him for more than a second. But only glances. It wouldn’t do for him to think Isaac wanted to start a conversation. “He was hot,” Isaac admitted, “but it doesn’t matter, because he’s never sitting next to me again.”

“You don’t know that,” Erica said, “he may be your soulmate.”

Isaac laughed, loud. “I guarantee he is not my soulmate.”

 

* * *

 

 

The next day Phoenix didn’t show up, and Isaac sent a smug email to the district manager informing her that Phoenix had washed out. As the district trainer, he should be less pleased when other bakers couldn’t hack it, but some awful part of him felt better about himself when other people couldn’t do his job.

One of the ovens decided to burn everything, so he ended up rushing through an extra batch of bagels which was fucking stressful and not even the most NPR of NPR podcasts that he had in his iPod could make it better. By the time he got on the train station he was exhausted and desperate to go to sleep and end this day. It was snowing heavily and he’d picked the wrong jacket just because it matched his shirt—which no one would ever know or appreciate and now he was freezing.

When he got to his usual seat he took off his wet jacket and put it on the window seat. Maybe it would convince the guy that he had someone sitting next to him if he came by. Isaac switched to an old recording Buzz Weller, a radio DJ he'd spent thousands of hours listening to, and closed his eyes. He’d never fall asleep on public transit, but at least he could take a break from the light for just a minute.

He kept his eyes closed as they rolled through Knoll and East Park and Pineland. The Pineland stop was where it all went wrong yesterday, and maybe the guy wouldn’t bother a sleeping man.

Wrong.

“Hey” he heard muffled through his headphones. “Hey,” was repeated. Isaac kept his eyes closed and ignored it.

Then a finger poked him in the shoulder. Isaac’s eyes flew open and he found the target immediately. It was the same guy as yesterday and he was grinning.

“Yo, dude,” he said, and Isaac reflexively took one of his earbuds out. “Wanna be best friends again?”

“We’re not best friends,” Isaac said bluntly.

The guy laughed loudly, “Yeah, okay but this train car is very full and I understand you are doing a territorial thing, but I seriously need to sit somewhere. You need to let me sit down. It’s common courtesy.

Fuck.

Isaac stood up and let him into the window seat, grabbing his coat before the guy could do something as insane as touch it. The seat was wet from his coat, and the guy jumped up when he sat down and hit his head on the overhanging ledge from the upper platform of the car.

“Fuck,” he said, “Jesus, you could have warned me.”

It was all getting too familiar for Isaac’s preferences, and he put his earbud back in and stared resolutely ahead. He turned up his podcast. The guy said other things throughout the trip but Isaac pretended not to hear him.

It wasn’t that Isaac was an unfriendly person. He just had two friends and he had Allison and that was plenty enough. Plus he was fucking exhausted—his 7:14 AM was other people’s midnight—and he wasn’t high. He was in no mood.

When the guy showed up again the next day he let him sit down without the song and dance.

By the fourth day Isaac just stood up when he saw him coming and let him into the window seat. He didn’t even leave his wet coat on the seat anymore. Because he wasn’t an unfriendly person. If the circumstances were different he might even flirt with the guy, even though he was doing a fuck then ghost thing right now. He was just fucking tired.

And besides, it’s not like he was going to be sitting next to this guy for the rest of his life.


	3. Social Prospects

Top 6 Worst Jobs Stiles Had Ever Had

 

  1. Bowling Alley (Bowling isn’t even fun, and the shoes stink)
  2. Cleaning out the back room of the sheriffs station (“The satisfaction of me paying your damn car insurance” was not a legal wage)
  3. Building a website for an indecisive, know nothing of html, timeline blind, easily frustrated, doesn’t-answer-emails small business owner (6 times. This had happened six times)
  4. Anthropology Department Assistant (how many times can Stiles incorrectly copy a syllabus and then get screamed at by Dr. Till? Four semesters in a row)
  5. Babysitting for Caitlin’s niece (The paint did not wash out)
  6. Slate 



 

Two weeks later Stiles got his first paycheck from Slate and unsurprisingly—given that Slate's human resources department functioned as well as an on fire extinguisher that was on fire—Stiles was handed a paper check without a paystub.

 

"That's coming!" the chirpy payroll woman assured him.

 

"So's your IRS investigation" Stiles said to himself.

 

"What?"

 

"Thanks!"

 

"You are welcome!"

 

Stiles immediately started calculating what a weeks pay would get him in plane tickets. One cheapo ticket to London. Or a three stop trip to Memphis, Santa Fe and Los Angeles. With what he had in the bank and the check he had coming in two weeks he could be gone and set up in another city in less than a month. Assuming he'd stay with at the job, it would add up fast.

 

March turned into April. The piles of snow melted then froze repeatedly, turning the sidewalks into an icy hazard. Stiles took minuscule steps over to avoid falling. He got into the habit of going to Jeanne's cafe after work and hogging their wifi bandwidth for a few hours.

 

On the home front Scott was the same as ever. What Stiles never picked up on over their Skype conversations over the past two years was how intense law school was. Scott still read a book a day, but he'd replaced video games with case reviews. Some nights he gently asked Stiles to go sleep in his bed and Scott set up to study in the living room for hours. He crept into bed next to Stiles at four in the morning.

 

Stiles realized that Scott had blown some commitments off the first few weeks he was here, and now Scott was constantly in the wind. On a Tuesday morning, for example, Scott stood in front of the dry erase calendar in the kitchen with an open textbook in his hand.

 

"I've got class today then I'm meeting with someone from the Law School, then I'm working on a project with some people then Allison tonight--we're going ice skating before they close the rink! Ok then I'll probably stay at her place if that's ok with you. Then class in the morning class, then Refugee Link in the afternoon, then study group at night. Which gives us time to take you to Portillos if you get of at the Briarwood stop on your train. Yes?"

 

What he hadn't anticipated—but should have—was that Scott treated Stiles like he was his kid brother coming to visit or something. Asking if he knew where the towels were, asking if he made friends at work—the same series of questions every day. Allison followed suit. Part of it was Scott, he kind of always treated people like that. But most of it was new.

 

Every joke Stiles made, even jokes as innocent as "I hope they sprinkle my ashes over the Slate cafeteria," elicited the _Scott look_ and Stiles finds himself exerting incredible effort say as little as possible to bring it out because it makes him feel like shit.

 

It wasn't like he only hung out with Scott, though. He never moved to a new city and depended on the person he moved to would be his only friend. That would be crazy. There were some younger people in the HR department who were polite with Stiles and invited him to come to lunch with them in the Slate cafeteria a few times. That went super well for the first few days, and Stiles even roped an invite to karaoke night. Which was promising, until it turned out all the other yuppies lived around Lake Wind and the last thing Stiles wanted to do was spend his free time across the street from Slate.

 

Even if the whole hanging-out-in-lame-spots thing didn't stop the potential friendships, Stiles sabotaged them that on his own the morning after an unintentional all-nighter.

 

He had spent the night on Scott’s couch with his laptop dimness on the lowest setting, researching autoimmune diseases. He knew at the time that he should stop, that it wasn’t helping him but he was down a rabbit hole and it wasn’t until Scott came out of his room at 5 AM, yawning, that he realized he’d been up all night.

 

Stiles was too dedicated to his all important work at Slate to miss work, but that didn’t mean he was in any shape to socialize.

 

"So where are you from?" Mandy from sales asked, sweet as could be.

 

"Northern California," Stiles from HR said, knowing exactly where he would end of up taking this and feeling entirely unwilling to stop himself.

 

"Oh my god! Was that just the coolest place to grow up?"

 

"No, not at all, our town was really inefficiently laid out and it rained a lot."

 

"Isn't it beautiful all the time though? Don't you feel like you're on vacation?"

 

"Yeah, I promise you those 'Visit California' ads are a lie. It's as bad as anywhere else."

 

"No shut up, I love California. I went to visit my sister in Los Angeles last year and it was so chill and relaxed! I don't know how anyone could not love living there."

 

"Oh my god!” Stiles gasped, “Way cool. That doesn't mean anything at all because we are closer to Kansas City right now than Beacon Hills is to LA!"

 

"Well okay—"

 

"And if you love California so much then you should stop drinking almond milk because that is basically what's causing the drought. Also maybe look at a fucking map sometime."

 

His fellow yuppies laughed awkwardly and Stiles went ahead and rescinded his karaoke invitation all on his own.

 

Dad asked about it, on one of their way fun phone calls.

 

"Of course I'm making friends dad," Stiles said, taking care to add a laugh to his voice to show how stupid the question was. "Plus, I have Scott and his girlfriend so any new friends are strictly extracurricular."

 

Scott and Allison who were at her apartment, leaving him alone, with no one asking him if he was hungry, and was he sure?

 

"Friends from work?" Dad asked.

 

"Uh, well no. But other friends."

 

"Stiles."

 

“ _Plenty_ of other friends.”

 

Socially he had exactly two prospects. There was Ellison, his boss who loved to "check in" and "get a pulse on things" and "see if Stiles had lunch plans." Then there was the guy he sat next to on the train in the morning.

 

Second was the dude he sat next to on the train every day. If anyone asked, they were friends because they spent 45 minutes together every day. Which was incredibly impressive for any friendship.

 

Sitting next to him was more a move of necessity than any actual pursuit of friendship. The exact same people took the train every day and seats were assigned in the same unspoken way they were in college classes. Once he sat next to him twice, that was Stiles' seat.

 

The guy Stiles sat next to on the train wore a different jacket every single day and threaded his headphone cords under his shirt. If he was impressed with the speed which with Stiles bought a monthly pass he did not show it. He barely moved except to get up to let Stiles into the window seat and leave the train. Sometimes he would pull the collar of his shirt over his eyes and press it there for a minute before pulling it back down and returning to doing an impression of the David statue.

 

He was hot. There was no denying that. Hot in an exhausted Greek statue, hostile, silent sort of way.

 

The big break in their friendship came when Stiles forgot his wallet on a Monday.

 

He brought his laptop bag and phone and even the little squishy ball he stuck on his desk and poked for six or seven hours a day, but not his wallet. The ticket guy and his seat neighbor stared at him Stiles dug through pockets in the bag trying to find his it.

 

"I guess I was robbed or something?" Stiles said, laughing a little hysterically. "Do I officially live here now?" The ticketing agent stared at Stiles, bored. "I mean, you're here all the time, you know I have a monthly pass."

 

"I don't remember you," the ticketing guy said. "I can come back when I finish this car, but if you don't have payment you can go on and get off on the next stop."

 

Then miracle of miracles, the guy who sat next to him took his one of his earbuds out. "You've seen him. He's been here every day for a month."

 

"Yeah!" Stiles cut in.

 

The ticketing guy blew air through his nose. "This isn't a chauffeur service."

 

"For fucks sake," and now both earbuds were out. He turned towards Stiles and for the first time Stiles saw his face full on, both eyes, both ears. It knocked the wind out of him a little bit. "You're going to Lake Wind?" Stiles nodded. The guy opened his backpack and pulled a five dollar bill out of his wallet and handed it to the ticketing agent. The agent handed the ticket to him and he passed it to Stiles.

 

The ticketing guy walked away and before he could put his earbud back in Stiles said "Oh my god, congratulations."

 

"On what?"

 

"I thought those were superglued into your ears. I was so worried."

 

He rolled his eyes but dropped his earbuds, letting them fall over the collar of his shirt. "Do you really think you were robbed?"

Holy shit after over a month they were actually talking.

 

"It's very possible," he said, but he was texting Scott at lighting speed asking if his wallet was in his pile of stuff in the living room. Thinking he was robbed when he wasn't may be a "typical thought pattern" but it wasn't a road he wanted to start wearing down so soon into his time in Chicago. Scott texted back immediately. “ _yes! :O will you be ok w/o it?”_

 

"Nope, wasn't robbed. Just left it at home. I didn't even wake up late, just you know those mornings were everything takes way longer than ever. I'm not even sure that I brushed my teeth."

 

The guy snorted. "From where I'm sitting, I think you did."

 

Stiles blathered on like a total fool. "God, you know how when you forget something like this it's going to fuck up your entire day?" Stiles rifled through his bag, hoping that something magically popped out of his wallet and jumped into his bag. "Like thanks for saving my ass there and confirming you have ear canals, but now I don't have my key card or work ID. I'm going to have to text my boss to let me in which is going to make his day."

 

"What?"

 

The novelty of talking to someone who wasn't Scott or Allison kept him going. "Then he'll think we're actually friends and I'll have to report his unwanted platonic attention to HR but their HR department works as well as a submarine in a tree and I'm supposed to fix it? Oh and my lunch is obviously at home too because it's that kind of day. Jesus Christ, I might as well just ride this thing to Wisconsin and start over."

 

His seat neighbor reached over and flicked the ticket pinned in front of his seat, the motion interrupting Stiles' rambling. "That ticket is only marked for Lake Wind so you'd get thrown off anyway."

 

"Where would I get thrown off?"

 

"Around Winsor. It's a nice town. Award winning."

 

"What was their award for?"

 

"I don't know." He opened his backpack and pulled out a bagel that he quickly wrapped in napkins and handed to Stiles. "Lunch."

 

"Jesus, you're full service." Stiles unwrapped the bagel to verify that it was a bagel before sticking it in his bag.

 

"You're welcome," he said.

 

"Thanks, I mean. I'm Stiles, by the way."

 

"Stiles?"

 

"Your name is also Stiles?"

 

"It's Isaac.” Isaac was silent for a moment, and Stiles prepared to go back to ignoring each other when he said, “You work at Slate?"

 

Stiles reflected on the six sentences he's said to Isaac and came up empty in the Slate department. "...yeah?"

 

"No one your age goes from Chicago to Lake Wind for fun. There's nothing out there but McMansions and soccer fields."

 

"Well maybe I work for the McMansion Soccer Field Association." Isaac didn't respond to that. "Did you give me your breakfast?" Stiles asked. "I totally would not want to steal your breakfast."

 

Isaac shook his head "That was for my roommate. I don't eat bagels."

 

"Well thank you for paying for my ticket, and lunch, Isaac. You're being a great seat neighbor."

 

Isaac made a face. "Thanks." He put his headphones back in and returned to staring straight ahead. The moment was over. Stiles returned to reading CNN on his phone.

 

They sat quietly for a few minutes. The train stopped and Stiles was distracted by the commotion of people getting off. He tried to think of something to say. And think of whether or not he actually wanted to continue the conversation, when he said something super stupid without thinking.

 

"You don't eat _bagels_?"

 

The words jumped out, even though it was highly rude to question the dietary choices of someone who was paying for his ride to work. But rather than look offended, Isaac turned towards Stiles.

 

Stiles took that as encouraging. "What the fuck, why not? It's a pure, good food. A pure good food that never did anything to anybody."

 

Isaac _grinned_. All teeth. He methodically pulled his earbuds out of his ears. "You're wrong," Isaac said. "Bagels are so bad for you. It's the equivalent of eating Styrofoam." He sounded thrilled, and Stiles pulse picked up like he was trying to catch up.

 

"You sound so stupid right now. It's not McDonalds. They don't even sell bagels at McDonalds--that's how healthy they are."

 

"McDonalds food has protein at least. Bagels have no nutrients, no minerals, hardly any fiber—"

 

" _Fiber?_ "

 

"—and are made with simple carbs which convert into sugar that converts into fat. They’re a total waste. They're one of the most useless foods you can eat."

 

"Bagels are worse than deep fried snickers. That's the stance you want to make."

 

"Yeah, I'd rather do that than just fucking eat whatever someone hands me. It's fucking dangerous."

 

" _You_ handed this to me. To your view, you gave me a hunk of sytrafoam that will ruin my life."

 

They had both fully turned and were facing each other. Stiles was dimly aware that this was the most stimulating thing that would happen to him all day. Ahead of him lay mindless work at Slate, and walking around the Slate campus eating the now infamous bagel Isaac gave to him. And not much else.

 

"Yeah, you're welcome," Isaac said.

 

Stiles laughed suddenly. The moment ended as suddenly as it came. Isaac put his headphones back in and Stiles returned to reading the news on his phone. About ten minutes later the announcement "Now approaching Briarwood" came over the intercom.

 

Isaac went through the same ritual Stiles had seen him do twenty times now. He opened and closed every zipper on his bag, patted his pockets and tugged his headphones out. He paused before standing up. "I'll see you tomorrow, I guess."

 

"Yeah, if I don't _die_ after lunch."

 

“Oh you won’t _die,”_ Isaac said as he stood, “You’ll just feel like shit for a couple hours. You look tough enough to survive it.”

 

Stiles watched him walk off the train. He put his laptop bag in the seat where Isaac had been sitting and tried to go back to reading on his phone, but he couldn’t focus. He couldn’t focus the entire day at Slate. Especially after he ate lunch—and totally survived feeling like shit. He was thinking about the last thing that Isaac had said to him.

 

One thing was for sure, Stiles needed to figure out a way to get them talking again in the morning.

 

Because ever since high school, ever since it all went wrong, everyone looked at him doubtfully. Like they weren’t just waiting for him to fall apart, they were expecting it. Dad, Scott, and now Allison because Scott had totally, totally told. And he proved them right, over and over. The guy on the train was just a stranger, but he had said something that Stiles needed.

 

No one had ever said he looked tough enough to survive anything.


	4. A Person of Consequence

Isaac didn't give much thought to paying for the guy who sat next to him--Stiles--after he got off the train on Monday. When he was picking rice papers that night before work he thought about it, only because he had $5 less than he was supposed to. For a minute he tried to remember if he'd hinted Stiles should pay him back, but the moment passed and he bought his rice papers and moved on.

Chris FaceTimed him at 4:17 AM and Isaac stopped working. He checked that nothing was about to burn then moved some carts aside so he could sit down on the cracked leather computer chair at the manger desk. Chris had his Europe beard and his hair cut short. 

“Where are you?” he asked, instead of saying hello. The last time they talked Chris was in Switzerland, and he hadn’t sent Isaac and Allison and email update since. Chris flipped the camera view and showed him the Nice apartment. France then. He turned in a circle, narrating abruptly. "Kitchen. Pears in kitchen. Living space. Couches. Door to my room. Door to other room. Front door."

Chris had given this tour from slightly different locations within the Nice apartment at least eight times over the years. The Nice apartment never changed. Allison had designed the Nice apartment, he'd been told, when she was fifteen and decided that her calling was to be an interior decorator. Everything in the apartment was white or green. Isaac's favorite feature was the boat net she'd slung across the kitchen ceiling. He asked Chris to show it to him every time he forgot how stupid it was.

Chris flipped the camera back towards his beard. "And you're at Jeanne's?"

"What gave it away?" Isaac asked. He was wearing one of the black shirts he bought in bulk and drowned in fabric softener for Jeanne's shifts. Behind him the door the the walk in oven was open and a half full tray cart was standing in the doorway. Besides that, when Chris was in France he only FaceTimed Isaac in the middle of the night. And there had only been one memorable night at a gay club when Isaac didn't answer the call at Jeanne's.

They spent some time going over the regular updates. Chris spent his time hiking and "keeping contacts." Isaac shaved a second and a half off his 200 meter freestyle. Since they last spoke Chris had spent some time in Brussels. 60 Bucks, the cat Isaac shared with Erica and Boyd, was still pissed at him. Chris didn't remember how Isaac managed to upset a cat in the first place. Isaac reminded him that he put 60 Buck's food bowls on top of the fridge for too long and now 60 Bucks knocked over anything he put on the counter.

Chris was leaving Europe soon. Isaac didn't ask for a specific date because Chris never really knew, he just popped up in a different continent when the need arose. It bothered Allison a lot more than it bothered him. Sometimes she asked him about it, in case Chris had given Isaac a specific return date and hadn't told her. Which was ridiculous, because they all knew Chris told Allison more than he told Isaac. 

"I will be home in a week or so. I spoke to Allison,” he said, proving Isaac right, “She wants me to have dinner with her new boyfriend. With both of them."

"I think he stopped being the new boyfriend six months ago," Isaac said. Judging by Instagram, they got together last fall.

"She sent me an email with a list of suggestions for how to form a relationship with him,” Chris said, sounding amused, “She wanted to remind me of the importance of our first conversation in setting the relationship.

"She clearly forgot about our first conversation" Isaac said. "If you want him to actually like you then you should threaten to kill him. History repeats, he'll move in with you within a year."

Chris sighed at Isaac's attempt at a joke. In the interim Chris had expressed how inappropriate it was for Chris to imply he would kill him the day they met, both as a stranger, and especially now as his adoptive father. Chris adopted him when he was seventeen, and had been trying to jam a lifetime of parenting into every conversation since.

He’d actually started his highly intentional parenting long before adopting Isaac, back when he was an angry sixteen year old fresh from rural Indiana, living with Derek but spending all his time in Chris and Allison’s apartment. Chris invited him to live with them within months of meeting, but sometimes Isaac still had a hard time believing that Chris wanted him to be his son. 

“I don’t think anyone will follow the same pattern we did with you,” Chris said, sounding amused. “I don’t plan on adopting any more of Allison’s ex-boyfriends.”

“Oh I’m special?” Isaac said, half joking. 

"You are,” Chris said. “Have you met him? Scott?" 

"No. Allison and I haven't seen each other since Christmas, anyway."

"Allison gave me the impression that you were in contact."

"Yeah, like on snapchat. She sends me pictures of dogs." Isaac used his feet to swivel back and forth in the chair, giving Chris a rotating view of the kitchen.

Chris's beard frowned. "I was under the impression that you...had each other."

They'd have some version of this conversation before. "Can we like, save this for when you're in America? We can also do the college, therapy and job conversation then."

Isaac mentally added "the car conversation" to the list. He'd managed to go four months without Chris finding out about his suspended license but it would be harder to hide with Chris living in the same country. His plan was to get his tickets and fees paid off before Chris got back but he was still at least two months away.

"If we talked about all those things in the same day, how long would you go without answering my calls?"

Isaac grinned. "Oh, I wouldn't be upset at all Chris. It would totally work for the first time ever. I would go out and sign up for community college, quit my job, start that eye therapy right that day."

"I don’t think you should start with EMDR," Chris said, leaving everything else on that table. The view moved off Chris's face and onto the net on the ceiling. Isaac could hear Chis moving his hand over the phone before he shifted the view back to his face. Isaac had seen the view shift this way often enough to know Chris was checking his watch. "I have to go now."

"That's fine, I should do my job."

"I'll email you both when I book my ticket."

Before Chris got back he would have to drive his car out of the backyard and park it on the street. It would delay Chris finding out. "Okay. I'll see you when your jetlag wears off?"

"Yes. Good?"

"Good."

Rain started soon after Chris hung up. There were no windows in the kitchen, something Isaac dealt with by propping the alley door open sometimes when it got too hot and small in the kitchen, but the rain forced him to close it. By the time he was walking to the Metra station it was a full on storm. These days Isaac had a heavy blue raincoat he'd spent way too much money on, but walking in the rain was still total shit. In the short time getting on the train and the train reaching Stiles' station the rain become a storm. Stiles practically fell through the sliding train doors and looked around like Isaac wasn't sitting in the same place as every day. His red hoodie was soaked and his normally teased up hair was deflated.

When he stood up to let Stiles into the window seat Stiles threw a small object in the air. Isaac caught it out of reflex.

"What's this?"

"Your money."

Isaac sat down and examined the object. Stiles folded the bill into a 3-D ring shape. It was as wide as Abraham Lincoln's eyes and forehead and folded down into a perfect ring that Isaac stuck the tip of his pinky through.

"Aw, now don't go fingering Abe," Stiles said. He pulled his hoodie off, revealing a navy polo that was also soaked. "I know you Illinoi....sians love the man, but that's just going too far."

"How long did this take you?" Isaac asked. The bill was folded over itself enough time to form a smooth arc.

Stiles looked for a place to put his hoodie and settled on throwing it over the far side of his seat. He scooted a millimeter closer to Isaac to make room for it. "I'm not going to lie to you Isaac. It involved a YouTube tutorial."

"Oh."

Stiles sat quietly. From the way it he was shifting, it took a lot of effort. Finally he gave up. "Do you get it?" Isaac tested the strength of the ring by squishing it a little, which made Stiles wave his hands desperately. "Don't you dare, that took me hours. Hey, it's a bagel. Get it? I gave you your money back, but I also gave you a bagel. Symbolically."

"You put hours of work into symbolically being a dick."

"Yeah that's kind of my main move."

"I find it takes a lot less effort to just be a dick."

"It's all about the theatrics," Stiles says. Lightning flashed outside the train window, and the people in the train car collectively let out a sound of surprise. "See?" Stiles said, like the planet had timed it just to prove his point.

The conductor started moving through their car, and Stiles took out his wallet and clipped his ticket into the slot next to Isaac. For the first time Isaac noticed that Stiles's wallet was made with rainbow duct tape. A girl at his elementary school sold duct tape belts and wallets during gym class. He wondered where an adult would even buy one, much less why they would choose to buy one.

"So you found your wallet?"

"Yep, my roommate says I left it in the bathroom sink and how that happened God only knows."

"Was your day as fucked as you thought it would be?"

"Pretty much, but every second I spend at Slate is fucked in the first place. That huge hunk of carbs you gave me was a major highlight. Is it weird that I know that you got the bagel from Jeanne's the second I took a bite?"

Isaac frowned. He’d never eaten Jeanne’s bagel, but he couldn’t imagine the were that distinct. "Yeah, kind of."

"I was right? Yes. What I don't get is why you woke up stupid early, went to Jeanne's and bought a bagel. Unless you somehow knew you'd be making my day."

"I work at a Jeanne's. Overnight. I made it."

"You work at Jeanne's? Which one?"

"Clark street."

"Holy shit!"

The most common reaction Isaac got when he explained his job was disinterest or annoyance. Stiles was to ask seven questions in a row and take a minute to marvel at the fact that "The dude who made every single pastry I've eaten in the past month was sitting next to me the whole time." His voice got loud and the cigarette smelling lady in front of them turned around pointedly.

"Darius makes the Saturday and Sunday stuff," Isaac said, feeling more than a little embarrassed. He didn't think much about anyone eating the stuff he made. "It's not like I make it from scratch. Most of it’s frozen and I just heat it up."

"Eugh, gross. Jeanne's is not as pure as I thought it was. Bummer, but I'm still a big fan of your work."

"Okay.” Isaac said. He was quiet for a minute before he realized it would be polite to reciprocate. “I'm a fan of your...toasters."

"What?"

"Doesn't Slate make toasters?"

"Oh." Stiles, who had been throwing his hands all over the place leaned back against his seat and ran his hands through his wet hair. "Yeah, I guess they must do something. I don't really work there, really. I do, but it's not exactly the focus of my passion. Making the five dollar bill bagel was is more my wheelhouse than anything I do at Slate."

Stiles launched into a detailed explanation of how useless and boring his job was. While he went on about his work "so simple a child could do it," he pulled his hoodie onto his lap and pulled hard on the hood drawstrings. Isaac couldn't follow what he was talking about, but he was used to Boyd sighing like the world was ending if someone didn't know what a nucleus was.

When they reached the Briarwood station Stiles wasn't finished explaining the ins and outs of how terrible his job was, so he picked right back up again on Wednesday morning. He sat down and started midsentence: "what's weird is that everyone needs FOBs except upper management. They walk around asking people to FOB them into rooms. I'm minding my own business and a suit walks into my little paper closet and asks me to let him into conference room 22D. Who planned that? What was the thought process?"

It took a second of Stiles starting at him for Isaac to realize that he expected him to answer. "What's a FOB?"

"Oh, right. It's like this little grey circle that you put on your keychain, and someone programs it to let you into specific rooms. For places with lots of secrets. Or money." Stiles fished into his jacket and handed Isaac his keys. There were at least eight keys on the ring, an Austin Public Library Card and a little grey key thing.

"I've seen these before," Isaac said, his voice just barely verging on defensive. "Dorms use them."

"Really? Mine didn't. So anyway, as you can see, Slate is a giant house of cards and "  
my status as barely employed there is...tenuous at best and tenuous for the best. You have to agree, it's a terrible job."

In the past nearly 24 hours Isaac forgot everything Stiles said about his job except that his knuckled hands were waving around while he explained it. What he did glean was that it was a boring office job that happened inside so it was not a terrible job, and he told Stiles as much. Then they somehow got to talking about TV shows they watched when they were kids, and without realizing how it happened, they fell into a serious conversation about the difference between Pluto and Goofy.

On Thursday Stiles was wearing a t-shirt from his college, because “fuck corporate dress codes.” 

“I’ve never heard of it,” Isaac said. 

Stiles pulled at his t-shirt and examined the lettering. “No one the fuck has, it’s in the middle of nowhere Iowa. Totally claustrophobic in a weird way because it’s surrounded by nothing but fields. Nothing going on there at all.”

“Sounds like where I grew up,” Isaac said, then clammed up because he’s said too much. He didn’t talk about where he grew up, ever. But it’s okay, he figured, because he’ll never see Stiles again once his tickets are paid off. He basically wasn’t a person of consequence in Isaac’s life. 

“Oh yeah?” Stiles said casually, not realizing the conflict Isaac was experiencing. “Are you from Iowa?”

Isaac paused then admitted, “Indiana.” 

“Sweet,” Stiles said easily, “I’m from Northern California. Which by the way is absolutely not the same as Southern California."

"Isn't the top of California as far from Los Angeles as we are from Memphis?"

"Yes. Thank you."

"Why'd you come here if you hate your job so much?"

"Oh, I actually came here from Boulder. By way of Austin. By way of Cambridge. Then Sweden before that. Amsterdam--I've lived a lot of places."

"For work or?"

"Just..I like to travel, I guess. I just go places and then I find the stuff that they have and then I move. People do it." Stiles took a heaving breath. "Do you travel much?"

"Yeah, sure. I take this train to Briarwood every day."

On Friday he gave Stiles Erica's phone number because Stiles is so bad at managing his own life that he's been sleeping on some suckers couch for over a month even though he was making mad corporate money.

He wrote her number on a Trader Joe's receipt and handed it to him. "She works for this, like stupid giant condo building and she's only supposed to sell those condos. But she has her real estate license, she could probably help you out."

Stiles flipped the receipt upside down and looked over the items on it. "Mango loaf?"

"That wasn't mine."

"So, this real estate maven is your girlfriend?"

"Um, no," Isaac said, "just my roommate. I don't really...date women."

It was ridiculous, how much he was revealing to this guy. 

There were at least six ways this could go. Stiles could pretend Isaac hadn't said anything. Maybe laugh, or even make a stupid joke. Stiles could stop talking to him, make some excuse to return to staring at his phone every morning. He could ride out the rest of the trip politely, then not return the next day. He could say something or do something then they might all get arrested and the day would be thrown to hell. Stiles could ask stupid questions and Isaac could dodge them because dodging questions was an Olympic sport he would win every medal.

Or what actually happened could happen.

"Oh!" Stiles said. "Cool. So," he handed the receipt back to Isaac. "do I get your number too?"


	5. Don't You Go on the Internet?

Things Isaac and Stiles Disagree About in the First Two Weeks of Speaking to Each Other:

  1. Bagels (amazing/globs)
  2. Emotional support animals (people who don't legit need them abusing the system/why are you mad about more dogs on the train)
  3. Winter/summer colors for clothes (not a thing/absolutely a thing but it's obvious that you've never heard of it)
  4. Lincoln Square (doesn't seem like a bad neighborhood/hipster dump)
  5. Guess the number jelly beans in the jar games from elementary school (awesome I won once/stupid no one has ever guessed the right amount)
  6. Whether Chicago has hard or soft water (I feel like I'm being attacked in the shower/stop talking about you showering)
  7. Whether Isaac singlehandedly caused the drought in California (the production of almond milk is destroying my state/yeah well normal milk destroys my digestive system/oh my god Isaac)
  8. The exact latitudinal and longitudinal coordinates that separated Northern and Southern California (38.4072201,-121.5187818,11; what?)
  9. Whether glass is a solid or a liquid (a conversation too hurtful to write down)



 

Stiles was proud to have been described by three different people and one mental health professional as a serial monogamist. Starting with Malia he hadn’t been single for more than three months since he was seventeen. While his only actual had-her-dad-cell-phone-number relationships were with women, he’d been with a few guys. Admittedly, he still wasn’t experienced. They both started with a rando dude he met at a party and were physical right away. There was no flirty build up, so he didn’t really know what that looked like.

 

Which was to say, he had no idea what was going on with him and Isaac.

 

Isaac gave him his phone number immediately, but they never texted aside from the cursory “this is stiles” “tf kind of name is stiles” exchange.

 

If life was a 80’s TV show, and Stiles knew damn well it wasn’t, they would be the obvious OTP of their work-place sitcom. For thirty minutes a day, they sat for inches apart from each other and bickered about each others garbage opinions. Sometimes Stiles agreed with Isaac’s weirdly inflexible opinions, but disagreed just to keep a conversation going.

 

Isaac was constantly 40% in a Bad Mood because he wanted to be asleep, and Stiles was also constantly 40% in a bad mood because he also wanted to be a sleep. They were a good pair. When he got on the train they were quiet for a few minutes, then one of them would throw something out that they would argue about.

 

Like one day, it was the way Stiles dressed.

 

“Don’t you work in an office? Don’t they take issue with your wearing graphic tees and flannels?”

 

Stiles plucked at his t-shirt with the Denver flag on it. “I’m a flannel bisexual. This is my culture.” It was his version of coming out, just in case asking for Isaac’s number wasn’t clear enough.

 

Isaac didn’t pick it up. “A what?”

 

“Don’t you go on the internet?”

 

“Not really.”

 

“Not _really?_ What do you do when you’re not slinging bagels or riding the train. _”_

Isaac rolled his eyes. “I work out. I listen to podcasts. Hang out with my friends. Don’t you hang out with your roommate guy?”

 

Stiles scoffed. “Yes. Obviously. But he’s busy, and I gotta hit up the web to keep my mind occupied. God, you are missing out on so much quality content. Do you not have a laptop?”

 

“No,” Isaac said bluntly.

 

“Oh,” Stiles said, trying to wrap his mind around a life without a laptop. “You have a phone though. Do you have a Facebook?”

 

“No.”

 

“Snapchat?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Oh great,” Stiles said, pulling out his phone. “We should be friends on that.”

 

After the first bagel, and their awkward exchange of phone numbers that led nowhere, Isaac started bringing Stiles a lemon poppy seed bagel every morning. He did it in what Stiles already thought of as a very Isaac way, which is to say that within five seconds of Stiles sitting down, Isaac chucked a bagel at him then refused to make eye contact for a full minute.

 

“Why lemon poppy seed?” Stiles asked while Isaac was still breaking his neck not to look at Stiles.

 

“Do you want a different one?” Isaac asked the center aisle of the train.

 

“No, just kind of a weird choice.”

 

“I always make too many of them, so they’re the easiest to take. Also, now that you eat one every day you’ll probably going to fail your next drug test.”

 

“Oh wow, thank you.”

 

Stiles was no schmuck, he pulled his weight in any relationship and right away tried to figure out an equal exchange to the bagels. His first attempt was bringing coffee. He stole disposable cups from Slate's kitchen and woke up seven minutes early to accomplish this. Isaac looked surprised when Stiles stuck the cup under his face, but accepted it with a small smile and "thanks." But he just held it for like ten mintues without making any motion to drink it.

 

"It has almond milk," Stiles said, when they got to the Grier stop.

 

"Oh," Isaac lifted the cup a little but didn't actually drink it, "thanks." Stiles made a point of taking an exaggerated drink out of his own cup. "Is California on fire now?"

 

"It is, yeah, thanks." Isaac started to say something but it turned into a yawn and he actually pulled the collar of his shirt over his face to hide it. Stiles's brain finally caught up. "You're going home. You're about to go to sleep."

 

Isaac dropped his shirt collar, revealing an apologetic smile. "...yeah."

 

"You don't actually want coffee right now at all, do you." There was a time that Stiles thought he would be an FBI agent and he still spent hours planning this coffee heist without once thinking that Isaac's goal was to be asleep in an hour.

 

"It was nice of you," Isaac offered, "I can drink it later."

 

"You can't drink old coffee."

 

"You can't?"

 

"Do you just not drink coffee?"

 

He handed Stiles the full cup. "Don’t feel too bad about it."

 

Stiles handed Isaac his empty cup and took a sip of Isaac's, grimacing at the weird taste from the almond milk. He seriously purchased almond milk just because his seat neighbor was lactose intolerant. Scott questioned him when he found it in the fridge, knowing that Stiles was deathly against almond milk, but Stiles just shrugged and said, “Trying something new.” He saw now reason to tell Scott about Isaac, not at this stage.

 

"Well I can tell you think it was nice because this is by far the least hostile you've been ever. What would you do if I gave you something you actually wanted?" he asked Isaac.

 

"I'm not that hostile."

 

"Like, something that's opposite of gluten and food dye."

 

"If I was hostile I wouldn't even let you sit here.”

 

“No lactose, obviously.”

 

“And I eat gluten."

 

“It should involve a dog. Oh my god, would you just become a really, like, nice person if I gave you a dog? And pot. Do you think they would let me bring a gluten-lactose-dye free dog on this train with a little basket full of pot on to this train? What would you do if I did that?”

 

Isaac paused, considering this. “Marry you,” he said, perfectly serious.

 

Stiles second attempt was hot chocolate. When the train got to the next stop Isaac took off the lid and examined the liquid. “Is there gluten in here?”

 

“Fuck you” Stiles replied.

 

"You're so nice," Isaac teased, "I bet people constantly talk about Stiles whatever your name is, nicest boy in town."

 

"Shut up," Stiles groused, "I'm never doing anything nice for you again."

 

He bought a bulk jar of hot chocoate mix and made turning on the electric kettle a part of his morning routine. 

 

* * *

 

 

Scott very nicely--very nicely--started referencing Facebook groups for apartments and subleases. His dad at one point literally said on the phone "For how long you've been sleeping on a couch, I'm wondering if we should schedule your first back surgery for December."

 

Dad also asked him if he had made an appointment with a psychiatrist (yeah in a week) and if he was good on refills (no that’s why i’m seeing the psychiatrist aren’t you proud of how responsible i am) and if Stiles wanted to know what the housing market was like in Beacon Hills.

 

Allison didn't come over all the time, which Stiles suspected was because of his presence. Not so much that she didn't like him, because that wasn't the situation. Just that it was too small a place to be a couple with Stiles folding one dollar bills into animal faces in the corner. When Allison did come over, she came with a recipe and a canvas sack full of expensive looking ingredients from international grocery stores. Scott spun around the kitchen while Allison took over the couch and tried to follow Stiles's dollar origami instructions.

 

"You'll have to come over and show me more of these," she said, "You know, when I move in."

 

"Yeah, count on it."

 

"Because I'm moving in soon. I'm moving in--"

 

"Yeah, don't worry when that happens we'll schedule your lessons when that happens."

 

"Alright."

 

It was fine though. If Allison wasn't moving in, there'd be no problem. Stiles was an excellent roommate. He'd lived with like ten different people in the last few years and no one ever kicked him out. He lived with Caitlin for three weeks _after they broke up_ and her new girlfriend moved while he was still there and they still had a grand old time. The problem was Scott's place was literally 380 square feet. So Stiles kept his bag in one corner of the room and he loaded the dishwasher without being asked. When Scott was studying Stiles was working on his WoW campaign at Starbucks--he stopped going to Jeanne's out of a unexamined fear that he would run into Isaac. He was the right amount of out of the way and the right amount of in-your-face when Scott needed it. During one of the latter times Scott started crying which was alarming as hell.

 

It was two in the morning and Stiles made him awful pancakes which were awful because it was his first time making awful pancakes but Scott ate them anyway. Scott started to explain the case study he was working on then stopped and pulled at the elbows of his orange hoodie. "I don't even know why I'm doing this."

 

"You're fulfilling your oath to represent your fake client to the fake best of your very real ability," Stiles said, as he rummaged through the weird seasoning and dried berries that were totally Allison's. Scott got up and fished out an unlabeled jar of orange jelly which he smeared on his plate of pancakes and Stiles's pancakes despite the his very clear sounds of protest.

 

"Sometimes I don't even know why I'm here," he said once his plate was clean, "I got a better scholarship to UC Davis. It's not like undergrad when I had to come here."

 

Stiles remembered clearly how all through senior year of high school Scott pretended that leaving home for college was an adventure he choose, and it wasn't because Easton gave him a lacrosse scholarship and Davis didn't. He kept the story up over Thanksgiving break, giving his mom wrapped a Easton sweatshirt and giving Stiles' dad a Easton keychain. The story only fell away over teary Skype sessions where Stiles tried to listen and pretended that college wasn't the coolest thing that had ever happened to him. Even though Scott ended up actually liking Chicago and spent some summers there, it was still surprising that he hadn't come home.

 

"There's no more lacrosse," Scott said, audibly trying and failing to keep his voice upbeat, "Most of my team is gone--they're doing really cool stuff but it's not here. I got into Davis. I could be living with my mom," his voice hitched and Scott hurriedly wiped his eyes

 

Stiles plopped another awful pancake onto Scott's plate. "Yeah, I don't exactly blame you for that. Your mom's a champion. I sometimes wish I lived with her too. But you've got this kick ass life here, and you're going to be a lawyer in a year which is fucking awesome. And Allison, while scary, is very worth staying in a frozen tundra for."

 

"I don't mean to complain," Scott said as he gently stabbed the pancake. "I think I'm just tired. I'm glad you're here too," Scott said looking over at Stiles. "I hope you stay."

 

So the apartment search was on.

 

* * *

 

 

For some reason Isaac was oddly invested in helping Stiles find an apartment. Besides giving him his friend Erica's number (which resulted in a drawn out and pretty one sided 3 AM text conversation about utility rates outside Chicago) he asked Stiles about his apartment search every day after the bagel/gluten-free hot chocolate exchange.

 

"Your life will get better in about ten different ways once you're not crashing on some guys couch" Isaac said one morning when Stiles showed up with converse and purple socks because he had no idea where his clothes ended and Scallison's began. "There's a designated spot for you socks, for one."

 

"Maybe I like having communal socks," Stiles said.

 

"No one likes having communal anything."

 

"Oh boy, I have big news for you about the foundations of society."

 

"Is it wearing a strange woman's socks?"

 

"You're really hung up on your socks. I'm starting to wonder--" Stiles said. He made a show of leaning to see Isaac's socks. It was impossible in the narrow space, and Stiles's knees knocked against Isaac's for a moment. Isaac extracted his hands from inside his jacket sleeves and knocked Stiles back into his seat, just gently enough to be playful. Stiles's knees followed.

 

"Do you just not know where you want to live?" Isaac asked. "Did Erica tell you that electric is way cheaper out here?" Out here being the rainy suburbs that they were rolling through at full speed.

 

"Yeah, in detail," Stiles said. "There's logistics though, to consider. I mean, you know. I can't go that far from this glorious dirt crusted wonder of public transporatation. Or I can, if I quit my job. Like I really don't want to move to fucking across the street from Slate or something. I'd like to never say the word Slate again if I could."

 

"So quit."

 

Stiles did not respond to that. The day before Ellison made a big deal about his "monthaversay" at Slate. He brought him lettuce from his garden in honor of the event. Ellison didn't seem to notice that Stiles had gotten barely any work done, partly because no one would ever notice if he didn't and partly because he was just running out the clock until Slate went under. During one productive Wednesday he ran out the clock with an Amazon customer service associate and got full series Star Trek TNG DVD set sent to Scott's apartment for a cool $5. Scott was thrilled and played it on his shitty TV for seventeen straight hours while studying.

 

"I want to stay around Pineland," Stiles, instead of defending why he wasn't quitting, because Isaac didn't have enough backstory to think it was embarrassing that he wanted to stay by his BFF. "Even though it's a super misleading name for a neighborhood with seven trees and twelve 'We Cash Checks."

 

"That place sucks. There's no way you're the kind of broke to live in Pineland. _I'm_ not broke enough to live in Pineland."

 

It was a little surprising to hear Isaac suggest Stiles had more money than him. Stiles had never considered any real difference between the two of them. They were both white dudes on a train moving in the same direction and Stiles was not the one who wore a different jacket every day and once referenced the Ralph Lauren summer collection. "What kind of broke are we?"

 

"Well _you're_ kind of broke that has a 'fob' and bought a $150 train pass on your first day of a job, which is to say not actually broke. I'm the kind of sleeps during the day because working at night pays two bucks more an hour."

 

"So quit," Stiles says, in the exact same condescending tone of voice Isaac used a minute ago. Isaac rolled his eyes. "Unless this moment is what you were you dreaming of this when you were a little boy in Indiana? I bet not. I bet you wanted to be a firefighter, but instead you spend your entire life creating bagels, the things you hate most. It's giving you a complex."

 

"Yeah _, that's_ what's wrong with me. You're the one who need to fix his life. I have my own sock drawer. And, by the way, have had the same permanent address for years. I know exactly where all my socks are."

 

His dad would _really_ like Isaac, Stiles thought. They could get on the phone and commiserate about how insane Stiles's lifestyle it was.

 

"I've never actually done this before, okay?" he said, all out defensive. ”I’ve only ever moved in with someone. I don’t know how to find a place to live.” Isaac turned towards him, which due to the small space they were sitting in indicated that he was putting effort into listening. “I didn’t even think I was going to sty here, but Scott is great and I don’t have anywhere else I want to go so now I have to what, choose somewhere with running water and sign a contract saying I’m going to stay in that room for a year?”

 

“A lease?” Isaac clarified.

 

“Doesn’t that freak you out? I looked at Scott’s lease and it says that he owes $5130 to the leasing company to pay out over 12 installments and if he doesn’t pay it once he owes it all at once? So if he decides he wants to leave he has to pony up $5000 dollars so he really can’t leave.”

 

Isaac was looking right at him, but he didn’t say anything. Finally, “How much is your friend’s rent?”

 

Stiles sputtered. He pulled out up the calculator “Four hundred dollars and twenty seven dollars a month.”

 

“You can afford somewhere nicer than that, right?”

 

“That’s,” Stiles waved his hands so much he accidentally hit the conductor who walked through the aisle. He pulled his arms in. “That’s so not even the point.”

 

“So it’s not that you can’t afford a place to live,” Isaac asked, but for once he was actually asking a question, not building an argument.

 

“No. It’s that,” Stiles stopped and thought about all the places he’d lived. Even in the good places, like Austin, he always felt better knowing that if it felt wrong, he could leave. “It’s that I don’t even know what I can get a good year out of this place. You know? I’ve seen two neighborhoods and _fucking Slate._ This is the windy city, but also it’s lame so far? No offense but like this is the most exciting 30 minutes of my entire day.”

 

And it was. Even on days that he spent hours with Scott he was half thinking about what he and Isaac talked about that morning, and what they would say the next morning. That wasn’t enough of a reason.

 

“I mean you have to live somewhere right,” Isaac said, “And you have a job here. And your friend.”

 

“Yeah, but is that enough?” Stiles demanded.

 

Isaac started to say something, and was interrupted by the intercom announcement that Briarwood was the next stop. Stiles an unexpected rise of panic when he realized that this was ending in a minute. He tried not to read into the way Isaac checked his phone clock as an indication that he felt the same way.

 

“You can text me,” Isaac said. He was already checking his backpack, getting ready to go. “If you, if you want to talk more about finding a place or the other…shit.”

 

“You want to talk about my other shit?” Stiles laughed. What was he going to do, text Isaac all day and detail his fucking mental health history and the probable reasons he couldn’t stand to stay with the same people in the same place for too long.

 

Isaac zipped his backpack hard. “Yeah. As long as someday, you give me a dog.”

 

An hour later Stiles was in his paper closet in at Slate and the text came through.

 

 

 **Isaac Train Guy (9:07):** you havent texted me yet

 **Stiles (9:11):** I wasn’t that upset

 **Isaac Train Guy (9:11):** k

 **Stiles (9:20):** I’m combing the woods for a stray dog for you

 **Stiles (9:20):** Also why don’t you have a your own dog yet

 **Isaac Train Guy (9:34):** were still on your baggage mine comes later

 

He had no idea what was going on with him and Isaac, but it was getting clearer.

 


	6. Red Napkins

 

 **Chris (7:14):** Can either of you pick me up from the airport?

 

Isaac was waiting for Stiles to get on the train when the text dropped in his group chat with Chris and Allison.

 

Three days earlier than he said he’d be home. No acknowledgment of the surprise, no apology for the short notice. He was probably standing at the gate in O’Hare now, staring at his phone patiently waiting for one of his children to flip over him being on the continent and show up.

 

It wasn’t that Chris was self-centered or short-sighted. It was that usually Allison and Isaac did flip, especially when he got home earlier than planned.

 

“Up,” Stiles said. They were at the Pineland stop, and Stiles was standing in the aisle waiting for him.

 

Isaac looked up from his seat. Stiles was waiting, so he stood up and let Stiles into the window seat, then sat back down, staring at his phone screen.

 

How was he supposed to explain to Chris why he couldn’t pick him up from the airport? Without telling him that his license was suspended?

 

“What’s up buttercup?” Stiles asked. “You look like that phone has done you wrong.”

 

Was he at the point with Stiles where he could talk about his problems? They joked around a lot, had fake fights that were just excuses to talk to each other. But they hadn’t really actually talked about their shit before.

 

“My dad wants me to pick him up from the airport,” he decided to say, keeping in generic.

 

“When, tonight?”

 

“No, like right now. When I get off the train, get in my car and drive to O’Hare and get him.”

 

Stiles screwed up face. “Your dad just flew here and he just now told you that he needs you to pick him up?”

 

“He travels a lot. He doesn’t always know where he’ll be when. And he can’t take cabs because he doesn’t like telling strangers where he lives.” If possible Stiles’s eyebrows raise even higher. Isaac’s defenses soar. “He’s not weird,” he insists, “He works in high risk fields, he’s just being safe.”

Stiles held his hands up in surrender. “Okay. Your dad is the best, I’m on board with this. So you’re picking him up from the airport.”

 

“I can’t,” Isaac said, “My license is suspended. That’s why I ride this fucking train.”

 

He prepared for judgment, he prepared to explain that he didn’t have a DUI or anything, he was just an idiot, but Stiles just said, “Ohhhhh.”

 

“Oh?”

 

“Yeah, ‘oh.’ I mean you are always kind of tense when you’re on the train? Which granted is 100% of the time I spend with you, but you reference your car and I’m like, wait why does this guy pay for a train pass if he has a car. So ‘oh.’ Mystery solved.”

 

Isaac didn’t think he was more tense than he normally was, and he didn’t think that was very tense at all. He always felt _ready_ for something, on alert but he didn’t think he was noticeably tense. But he’d noticed that Stiles was hyper observant, always making comments on the people on the train or the stores they passed that Isaac would never notice.

 

“I’m getting it back once I pay off some tickets,” he amended, “I just had too many and I guess there’s some rule about speeding tickets so that’s why I’m stuck on this thing. It sucks too, because my best friend doesn’t have her license, and I used to take her to work and pick her up, and now she has to pay for Lyfts every day. So I basically suck.”

 

Stiles shook his head. “Dude that sucks. Shit, I can’t imagine not being able to drive.”

 

“You don’t have a car,” Isaac pointed out.

 

“Yeah, by choice. Plus I always have a car in my heart, because I left my Jeep back at my dad’s. What are you going to tell your dad?”

 

He hoped Stiles would be able to come up with that. He glanced down at his phone and saw another text had come in.

 

 **Allison (7:19):** I’m on the freeway going to work but I know SOMEONE who is free

 

Fuck. Now he basically couldn’t say no. Allison knew he’d gotten in trouble, but she didn’t know that he’d lost his license in the process. If she did she wouldn’t throw him under the bus like that. He could drive and risk getting caught, but if he did he would go to jail again and he couldn’t handle that. If being on a train car made him claustrophobic, being in a jail cell made his entire brain shut down, and it always took a few weeks to get back to normal.

 

So he couldn’t drive.

 

“I don’t know,” Isaac said, “I don’t know what to tell him.”

 

Stiles shrugged. “Dude, you still have a working car right? Why don’t I just ditch work and drive.”

 

Stiles? At his house, in his car, meeting Chris? No. No way. “That would require explaining to my dad why I’m not driving.”

 

“True. And it was such a good excuse not to show up at work too.”

 

Isaac tapped out a message that’s almost not a lie.

 

 **Isaac (7:24):** i can’t drive my car. i’m sorry.

 

Chris replied immediately.

 

 **Chris (7:24):** Is it broken down?

**Isaac (7:24):** i can’t drive it.

 

 **Chris (7:25):** No trouble. I will rent a car.

 

Isaac sighed. “He’s going to rent a car for the drive from O’Hare to Briarwood. God, I’m the worst son ever.”

 

“You’re not,” Stiles said, “Murderers are the worst sons ever. You’re not a murder, are you?”

 

“I’m not,” Isaac says.

 

“Well good. Are you close to paying off your tickets?”

 

Isaac knew exactly how much was in his bank account and after rent and bills there wasn’t much to put towards his tickets at the end of every month. He was working hard at it, but it wouldn’t at least another month still.

 

“Yeah,” Isaac said.

 

“So you’re close to not riding this train anymore,” Stiles said, his voice perfectly even.

 

“Yeah,” Isaac said, “I am.”

 

* * *

 

 

 **Chris (1:47):** I’m going to the store. Your options for tonight are bacon wrapped pork loins, shrimp scampi, chicken stir fry

 **Allison (1:52):** Aren’t we fancy! Where is the pork from?

 **Chris (1:52):** Jewel.

 **Allison (1:52):** No thank you.

 **Isaac (1:54):** is it ok if we do tofu stir fry

 **Allison (1:55):** That’s fine with me.

 **Chris (1:57):** Chili sweet potatoes?

 **Allison (2:02):** Yes

 **Isaac (2:02):** obviously.

 

Three days after Chris got home from France his jetlag evened out enough for him to reinstate Sunday night dinner. When he was in town he made a point to invite Isaac and Allison and occasionally the people they dated to come over for dinner, followed by making a cake. It was good tradition. Boyd was home for once and drove him to East Briarwood and only spent most of the ride talking about med school.

 

Usually Isaac and Allison alternated weeks to get there early to help cook, but since it was Chris’s first week home they both showed up at 4:30 with dinner rolls.

 

Allison shook her bag of rolls at him in mock rivaly. “Garlic rosemary rolls. I talked the manager of Eesvil on 5th into giving them to me.”

 

Isaac shook his bag right back at her, “Pretzel rolls I made _from scratch.”_

“Not fair that you can always pull that move.”

 

Chris was happy to see them, he talked more than he normally did, but he was still tired and tried badly to hide his cartoonish yawns.

 

“Dad you should take a nap if you’re tired,” Allison said firmly. “We’ve can handle prep.”

 

“I’m perfectly fine,” Chris said. “And I don’t want you two fighting for seasoning control. We may not survive the night.”

 

Catching up always happened over dinner. As a result, and fucking thankfully, while they were prepping no one mentioned that the last time they had dinner Isaac’s ex was there and not an ex. Which wasn’t guaranteed, because until the end they both liked said ex.

 

The kitchen was big enough for them all to work in—their dynamic as a family pretty much depended on that—but once the vegetables were cut there wasn’t much for three people to do so Allison headed to the dining area to set the table.

 

Chris watched her go. Isaac could see him start to say something then stop before he finally said, “There are new place settings in the paper bag on my chair.”

 

Allison stopped walking and Isaac stopped breading tofu. They both turned to look at him because _what the fuck?_ Seriously. Isaac had never gone to Europe with Chris, but he knew from Allison’s frequent and loud complaints that he had a strict rule against bringing tchotchkes and souvenirs on the plane. Art was allowed, as was antique weaponry. Napkins were not. If it didn’t serve a necessary or aesthetic function, and if it could be bought in America it was staying in the Nice apartment.

 

Chris pretended not to notice them. “Is the tofu ready?”

 

“Yeah, yeah,” Isaac said, making one more _what the fuck_ face at Allison before scraping the tofu into the pan.

 

When Chris left the room Allison hissed _“Isaac”_ to get his attention. The table was almost completely set and Allison held up the cloth placemat in her hands like a flag.

 

It was bright red with an embroidered flower in the corner.

 

“He didn’t buy that,” Isaac whispered.

 

“You think?” Allison hissed.

 

“Did your France friends buy them?” Despite everyone wanting him to, Isaac had never been able to get on a plane to go to France, so the France friends were more theories than anything.

 

“No, they have good taste.”

 

Chris came back in the room and they both went back to what they were doing. He looked between them, sensing they were up to something.

 

“What’s going on?” he asked.

 

“We were just talking about how much we missed you,” Allison said, then put the placemat in her hands with just a little more drama than necessary.

 

Discussion of the insane place settings ended until they sat down for dinner. Catching up required talking about themselves which only Allison was even marginally comfortable with. Allison tried for a while to get Chris to tell them about his time in Europe, which was always needlessly difficult. He gave short answers and then deflected focus to Allison, or deflected focus to Isaac who deflected it to Allison.

 

Isaac was pretty sure normal families were able to talk about themselves. The only other family he knew well—besides the Laheys who really didn’t count for measuring normalcy—was Erica’s. The Reyes loved talking about themselves. They couldn’t get enough of it. They told stories that lasted twenty minutes. More than once Isaac had seen Erica jockey for her family’s attention, going as far as to yell “Can we talk about me for a second?”

 

Yeah, no one ever said that at their dinners. They moved between Chris losing his watch in London, Isaac’s cat, Allison’s upcoming move, whether Chris was getting a haircut. Then landed on Isaac’s upcoming trip to open a Jeanne’s store for two overlong minutes.

 

“It’s just Wisconsin,” Isaac headed, “It’s not the most exciting thing that’s ever happened.”

 

“Sending you shows that Jeanne’s values your work,” Chris said, “They wouldn’t send you unless you were very good at your job.”

 

“Allison, did you tell Chris about the flood in your office?” Isaac said, hoping that the idea of Allison being in danger would be enough to move off this conversation.

 

Chris didn’t take the bait. “You should be proud of your work.”

 

Jesus.

 

“Allison,” he tried again, “Did you tell Chris that you are suing a school?”

 

 _That_ worked. Chris calmly put his fork down and inhaled. “Allison.”

 

Allison sat up a little straighter. “Yes. Technically I’m not suing anyone. Refugee Link is preparing to sue.”

 

Chris barely nodded. He looked torn between proud and horrified. This definitely would keep focus of Isaac for a good while. “Tell me more about the lawsuit.”

 

“They are routinely denying our kids a free and appropriate education. My calls go unanswered, our parents are called into meetings without a translator. I have one kid who I’ve been trying to get into an elementary school for three months. It’s unacceptable.”

 

“Couldn’t any of that be said of any student in the school?” Chris asked.

 

“Yes,” Allison said emphatically, “And it’s not okay. But I’m only responsible for Refugee Link families, so we’re suing on their behalf.” She got up and retrieved her phone from her purse. “Look. This is from a school principal.”

 

She handed Chris her phone and his glasses. He took both, and squinted at the screen. “‘Hello Ms. Argent’” he read, “ ‘Please stop calling our office. It is not our policy to cater to the whims of every student. If Yaa wants to go to school here, she will have to learn English or fail. As a—”

 

He stopped reading for a second then picked up again, “‘As a refugee I’m sure she’s survived worse.’” They all sat for a second, probably all reflecting on how fucked up what he just read was. It wasn’t the most fucked up thing Allison had run into in her job, but still.

 

Chris took off his glasses and handed the phone back to Allison. “So you’re suing a school.”

 

“So I’m suing a school,” Allison agreed. She sat back down and offered her phone to Isaac like he wanted to read that again. He took her phone and put it down. “It might not go anywhere, but I want to show our families that what’s happening is wrong.”

 

“Isn’t this going to take a lot of time?” Isaac asked. He knew he was being a buzz kill but sometimes he couldn’t help it, “You already work way more than you’re supposed to. How are you supposed to have a life?”

 

Allison picked up her phone and put it in her pocket. “This is my life.”

 

“Well then,” Chris said, “You should be proud of yourself too.”

 

“I am,” Allison said, impossibly confident. Then, with absolutely no transition she picked up her flowery red napkin. “These are nice.”

 

“Yes,” Chris said plainly, “I thought so.”

 

“You usually don’t bring incidentals like this back from France.”

 

“Yes, well. Ours were getting worn out.”

 

“Who gave them to you?”

 

“They were bought in Holland, I believe.”

 

“Yes, bought by who?” Allison wheedled. “Come on. Matthéo and Katia would never buy these.” She rolled her eyes, “They are of course very nice but not their style. It’s someone new, someone I don’t know.”

 

Over the years there were points when Allison and Isaac suspected Chris might be dating someone. Well, mostly she did. Allison was better as snuffing out clues, and also way more into interrogating Chris about them. Isaac always thought that the clues—long phone calls, new clothes, sudden flights—could indicate 400 things up to and including dodging a hitman. Chris never confirmed anything, usually the so called clues disappeared and Allison would declare the case unsolved.

 

For someone who was so in favor of his kids being honest with themselves and others, he sure loved keeping secrets.

 

“They were a gift, right?” Allison continued, “Isaac doesn’t think you bought them yourself.”

 

“You don’t?” Chris said, amused.

 

“Why am I involved now?” Isaac whined. They looked at him, waiting. “You don’t own red things,” he explained lamely.

 

Chris smiled quietly, “I appreciate your interest in my new table settings. I assure you, if there is something happening in my life that you need to know about you will.”

 

Allison caught Isaac’s eye and gave him a serious knowing look.

 

Chris took that pause as an opportunity to do what he did best. In as dramatic a way as possible he changed the topic of conversation by saying “Allison. Why isn’t your boyfriend here tonight?”

 

And Allison, truly her father’s daughter said, “Did you ask about my boyfriend because these napkins remind you of yours?”

 

 

 **Allison (9:14):** Are you going to sleep over at Dad’s?

 **Isaac (9:19):** ? no i’m going to work. i’m still here but i’m leaving

 **Allison (9:19):** Would you send me a picture of his napkins?

 **Isaac (9:19):** why?

 **Allison (9:19):** So I figure can reverse engineer if anyone we know bought them. Just take a picture when he’s not paying attention

 **Isaac (9:20):** “when he’s not paying attention”

 **Isaac (9:20):** should i wait until he’s brain dead

 


	7. My Brain Is

Stiles’s Apartment Wish List (with sources)

  1. Total rent and utility cost no more than 1/3 of income (Per Dad’s advice)
  2. Walking distance from a 24 hour 7-Eleven or lessor convenience store
  3. Furnished
  4. Month to month lease
  5. Walking distance from a good grocery store (Per Allison’s advice)
  6. Stand-alone shower none of that vestigial bathtub shit
  7. If it shares a wall with other people make sure they don’t have their TV on too late at night or too loud because that could ruin your entire life (Isaac)



 

When Stiles started going on apartment showings, Dad and Scott both acted like it was the miracle of the world. Scott borrowed Allison’s car and carted them around the north side.

 

“It looks like if I go south of downtown it’s a lot cheaper,” Stiles said, showing Scott the map on his real estate app. “I know there’s the whole ‘south side of Chicago’ thing, but I’m scrappy.”

 

Scott nodded agreeably. “Yeah. Yeah. But _I_ don’t live there, so you shouldn’t either.”

 

“Such a great point.”

 

At Slate, Ellison found an entire other trove of records for him to sort through, exponentially adding to the mountain of work he’s supposed to do. Still, no one noticed that he’d gotten almost nothing done. Instead, he spent his $25/hr time designing a program that would automatically scan and file all the documents he’s supposed to be manually filing at a reasonable speed. The trick wasn’t getting the documents scanned, it was programming the software to tag it appropriately.

 

He explained his project to Isaac one morning and its gratified by how much effort Isaac put into not looking bored.

 

“I know,” Stiles said after he’s listed all the tags he was trying to code for. “I know. This is my life now.”

 

“How fast do you think you’ll get all the documents scanned once the software’s done?” Isaac asked. God bless, there’s no way he had any interest in that.

 

Stiles did some mental calculating. “Uh, given all the random shit Ellison keeps adding to the pile, I’d say once I get it hooked up to an advanced printer it could just go and be done in a week with me watching it.”

 

“That’s cool. So once you’re done then your job is over?”

 

“Yeah, hence why I’m not telling anyone about my master plan. Gotta keep that Slate money coming as long as possible. If I really wanted to, I could just never tell any of them that I’m a comp-genius and work there until I die.”

 

“But you hate Slate.”

 

“And you hate Jeanne’s!” Stiles sang. He wiggled back in his seat so he had enough room to put his hand on Isaac’s shoulder. “Look at us, we’re a match made in heaven.” Isaac’s smile wavered a little. Shit. Stiles kept his hand on his shoulder, but only out of semi-terrified inertia. “Transit heaven, I mean. We’re a transit match made in transit heaven.”

 

“Yeah,” Isaac said, his voice light. Stiles took his hand off his shoulder and moved hard and fast onto getting Isaac’s opinion on whether he should talk to he crazy mail lady or not.

 

He didn’t tell Dad about Isaac, or his master plan to save Slate with modern day technology. When they talked most of his energy was in getting as much information about Dad as possible. What routes was he driving when he worked at night? Was that idiot deputy who put a glue gun in his hostler still there? _Why?_ Why could he possibly still be employed by the Sheriff’s department?

 

Dad asked him the same four questions every phone call.

 

How’s Scott?

 

How’s the apartment search going?

 

Still working at that toaster place?

 

Have you found a psychiatrist yet?

 

“I already told you,” Stiles said, “I’m seeing one this week.”

 

“That’s _great”_ Dad said. “I’m really glad about that.”

 

“Me too,” Stiles lied.

 

It wasn’t that he didn’t like doctors. Stiles knew that the in vogue thing was to resent psychiatrists and therapists. On any TV show the fragile, unstable characters would yell “I don’t need those quacks telling me to live!” or “I don’t want to be on medication for the _rest of my life.”_

Yeah, Stiles absolutely needed those quacks telling him how to live and would be thrilled to be on medication for the rest of his mercifully lucid life.

 

Even so, he was asymptomatic which made it a big pain in the ass when his Boulder doctor, Dr. Bhatt, refused to refill his meds—shouldn’t there be laws against keeping crazy pills from a crazy person? Didn’t he know that without meds Stiles was an actual stark raving lunatic?

 

Part of him wanted to just let that happen so he has an excuse to sue Dr. Bhatt so he wasn’t so fucking bored all the time. The rest of him sweet-talked his way into an appointment a week later.

 

Dr. Mejia, MD. UC Davis. Her office is across the street from Jeanne’s.

 

Stiles didn’t hate doctors, but he did hate intakes.

At the appointment he sped through the necessary history intake appointments were always a really super fun experience. Northern California, public school, single dad, mom died at ten—yes it was very sad—extended family worth talking about is still in Poland, college in Iowa, BS in Anthropology, living with best friend, working as a database consultant, no that’s not related to Anthropology at all. Then he got to the good stuff.

 

Nothing like rehashing his greatest traumas and years of episodic psychosis while also trying to convey how _very very normal_ he was.

 

She didn’t act surprised by anything Stiles said, even the really crazy stuff that rattled the doctors in the hospital.

 

"I don't think I'm a murderer anymore," he joked, "That's a relief." 

 

She just took brief notes and nodded. When Stiles’s history caught up to his move to Chicago she summarized, “Your last debilitating episode was four years ago?”

 

“Yeah,” Stiles said, so fucking relieved that she wasn’t searching for signs that he was having one now. “Yeah, you know incidental stuff since then. But I’m a model patient I swear. If I even start to start to have symptoms I’ll make an appointment. There’s no need to throw me into the loony bin.”

 

She arched her eyebrows at that.

 

“I know what you’re thinking. That was a joke, not paranoia,” he said.

 

“I figured. So you’re largely asymptomatic, but I’d still like to meet with you once a month while we establish a baseline. Do you have any paranoia or delusions with the medication your on?”

 

“Who doesn’t think their neighbors are trying to kill them?” Stiles joked.

 

“Funny,” she intoned, “Try again.”

 

“Nope, not for a while. I hate my job, but if that’s crazy then you should lock up my entire generation.”

 

Dr. Mejia jotted down his prescriptions and held them out to him. “I’m giving you one month refills. Make an appointment for a month from now up front. I also strongly suggest you find a therapist. It’s an important part of maintenance. Ask Renat for a list of provides that take your insurance before you leave.

 

“Yeah, no problem.”

 

Just when Stiles had his backpack and coat on and was ready to head out for a night of World of Warcraft and beer, she caught his attention. “I have a lot patients like you. Highly intelligent, low symptomology. It’s possible to have a wonderful clear life, even with a diagnosis involving psychosis. We just have to stay on top of it so you get to keep that life.”

 

It was supposed to be a hopeful message to end on, but all Stiles heard was “you are two knocks in the head away from living with your dad for the rest of your life.” It wasn’t her fault, once he had to put the rubix cube down Stiles felt restless and fucking _sad._ There should be a rule against having to tell someone your life story and everything that’s wrong with your brain for forty minutes, then paying $130 to do it.

 

Despite himself, five minutes later Stiles found himself across the street in a booth at Jeanne’s with a giant cup of coffee and a raspberry scone. He was supposed to be going home but fuck Metra schedules and fuck made up rules about avoiding running into train friends. He was going to treat his sadness with fat and caffeine.

 

Isaac tried to ruin the scones with details of the chemical composition of the juice that the raspberries are stored in but nothing could ruin a perfect raspberry scone made by his favorite jerk.

 

Knowing that Isaac made the scone on his plate and every pastry in the display cases made him feel like he was in on a secret. Stiles settled in in a back booth and set a time on his phone to leave at 8:30.

 

Scott knew that he was seeing a new psychiatrist. If Stiles went home he was in for a series of sideways questions while Scott balanced his law school notes and making another over the top dinner for Allison. Most of the time Stiles was glad that Scott seemed less effected by what happened than he was, but sometimes the reminders that he was a magnificent human being while Stiles was barely scraping by was too much.

 

He texted Malia, who was stateside for once and had been answering her texts. He wasn’t supposed to talk to people he met in the hospital, but Stiles never bought the reasons why and seven years had passed without anything bad coming out of their friendships. Then relationship. Then friendship.

 

Stiles 7:47: Saw a new psychiatrist just now

Malia 7:49: good ur supposed to

Malia 7:50: if you don’t you could become crazy again and you are annoying when you are

Stiles 7:51: Thank you for your kind sensitivity. I always know I can count on you to be empathetic.

Malia 7:54: np

Malia 8:57: hey i just read a g8 article on men relying on women for emotional labor. want to read it?

Stiles 7:58: Is that a hint?

Malia 8:03: hey i just read a g8 article on men relying on women for emotional labor. want to read it?

Stiles 8:03: We’re friends I’m just telling you about my day!

Malia 8:07: hey i just read a g8 article on men relying on women for emotional labor. want to read it?

 

He stopped talking to Malia.

 

Thoughts kept coming back. The one-sentence summaries of things that he told Dr. Mejia clamored to the front of his mind. The sound of the pipes in the high school, sneakers squeaking across tile, the way the water smelled when he was seventeen and trying to come back to himself. It’s all in technicolor detail, pulling him away. With his eyes closed, he forced the thoughts back by repeating a mantra he developed in therapy years ago.

 

_I’m in a café, I’m in Chicago, my brain is trying to hurt me._

 

It worked. The thoughts didn’t disappear, but they demanded less of him and Stiles tooks deep breaths. He was in a café. He was twenty four. He was in charge of his brain. When he was ready he opened his eyes. And found that Isaac standing two feet away from him.

 

“Jesus Christ!” he gasped.

 

“Hi?”

 

Stiles was hit with five facts at once.

 

  1. Isaac was here even though he definitely didn’t start work until 10
  2. He was way taller than Stiles thought he was
  3. He was wearing a blue sweater with a hood and his eyes were like sea glass.
  4. He was smiling at Stiles even though Stiles definitely looked crazy
  5. Stiles planned to leave before this happened because light was exploding inside him and if he didn’t have feelings for Isaac off the train he wouldn’t have to do anything about it but he did he totally totally did.



 

“Hi.”

 

He wasn’t the saying the mantra out loud was he? Does he seem totally insane?

 

“So you’re here?” Isaac asked.

 

Stiles nodded dumbly (see 5). “You’re…here early?”

 

Isaac sat down. If Stiles wasn’t imagining things he looked nervous, his gaze darting from Stiles’s empty plate to his eyes then back. “Yeah. I’m here for the Pastry Party.”

 

“Pastry Party?”

 

“It’s what we call the staff meeting. I hate it.”

 

“I bet.”

 

They’d never held eye contact like this before. The cloying thoughts are swiftly replaced with hyper awareness of this moment and the growing awkwardness between them. For months they sat next to each other and looked at each other only when the stories they were telling called for it. For a minute they sit, staring at each other.

 

“I had one of your scones,” Stiles said, breaking the silence. “It tasted good, xanthan gum and all.”

 

Isaac grimaced, “They’re going to throw out like thirty of them about twenty minutes. You can fish them out of the dumpster if you want more.”

 

“Aw, that’s a really sweet offer.”

 

They sat for a minute of awkward silence. At what point was he supposed to make an excuse and leave? He was planning on leaving after all. Oh my god what were they going to say to each other on the train tomorrow?

 

Stiles reached out and pressed down on the side of the plate then let it fall back, clattering on the table. They watched the plate right itself, and Stiles willed himself to think of something to say before it stopped.

 

“I really hate these meetings,” Isaac said. “All we talk about is like, sales promotions or…I don’t know. Napkin disposal. My job never changes.”

 

“So you’re the cowboy of bakeries. They should make a TNT show about you.”

 

Isaac grinned. Stiles had never seen that full on before. “Shut up. You hate everyone you work with too.” He reached out and rattled the plate the same way Stiles had. “So…how was your day?”

 

Super fucking great until an hour ago. He shrugged. “My coworkers tried to get me to join a scrabble club. Came down for one of your fine pastries. How was yours?”

 

If not a direct answer, Stiles expected more banter, especially because he set Isaac up to insult his own pastries, which is one of his main pastimes. Instead, he focused in on how Stiles was ripping up a napkin and putting the scraps in his empty coffee cup. “Are you okay?”

 

He scooped up the pile of napkin shreds and dumped them in the cup. “What this? I’m just trying to give you more work.”

 

“Seriously.”

 

“I’m okay. I just had…” No, he wasn’t telling Isaac about seeing Dr. Mejia. Maybe Isaac was his only friend beside Scott in this state, and maybe he kind of thought it would be nice to talk to someone who seemed to get him right now. But if he told him a little, Isaac might want to know a lot and then a lot might be way too much. “…I just had kind of a weird conversation with someone.”

 

Isaac nodded, “Okay. Look I—I have to go to the fucking pastry party. Are you going home, or?”

 

“Yeah, that was the plan.” He swiped all his torn up napkins into the cup and stood up. Isaac stood up too.

 

He looked at Stiles like there was something wrong with him, and Stiles found himself running his hand over his face checking to see what Isaac’s seeing. He wasn’t crying, he didn’t think he sounded upset when he talked, but he felt known in a way that almost never did.

 

Stiles reached behind him and tossed his garbage. When he turned around Isaac was still there staring at him.

 

“Do you want a hug?” Isaac asked. He sounded sarcastic, but he looked at Stiles with an intensity that means that he was serious.

 

So he’s allowed to say yes. “Yeah,” Stiles said, laughing a little hysterically. “Yeah, I would really love it if you hugged me.”

 

He did. He wrapped his arms around Stiles’s shoulders and Stiles wrapped his arms around Isaac's back and it’s _so fucking nice._ His face has nowhere to go but Isaac’s chest and he kept himself from breathing in like he’s in a bad romance novel. Isaac smelled like pink lemonade and he’s firm and here and real. Stiles took a deep breath and patted Isaac on the back, forcing himself to end the moment before he can turn it into something bigger than it is.

 

“Thanks for that.”

 

When they pull away Isaac kept his hand on Stiles’s shoulder for another minute. “Yeah, yeah don’t mention it. I’ll see you in the morning?”

 

“Yeah,” his voice cracked. He cleared his throat and tried again. “I’ll see you in the morning.”


	8. Week in Mallou

 

In May Isaac spends a week in Wisconsin helping with a new Jeanne’s store opening. An unfortunate result of not being total garbage at his job is that in addition to making him train all new Chicago Jeanne’s bakers, sometimes corporate puts him up in a hotel out of district to train bakers at new stores. Apparently, he’s the only person in a 60 store company that is capable of teaching people how to roll dough.

It means working eight days in a row and being in a kitchen he doesn’t know. Sometimes it’s fun, like when he ends up in a city like Madison or even Las Vegas once. Las Vegas was cool. The location of the new Jeanne’s he was supposed to help open was Mallou, a water park tourist trap.

 

Less cool than Las Vegas.

 

But, the hotel they put him in had an indoor water park attached. Boyd and Erica came up with him the first few days to take advantage of the free pool and buffet. Guests weren’t technically allowed, but Isaac’s worked at Jeanne’s on Christmas Eve for three years now, so there was no end to what they owed him.

 

It was still off-season and there weren’t as many screaming kids, so they messed around in the lukewarm water for hours before he had to go to work the first night. While he got ready to leave Erica and Boyd got ready to go to the only bar in town, already game planning for what movie they want to watch when they get back to the hotel room.

 

“When you do get back,” Isaac said, lacing up his boots, “Please contain yourselves to…there” he waved generally at the bed Boyd and Erica put their bags on.

 

Erica looked around like she was confused. She pointed to the bed Isaac claimed. “Oh, this bed? We should have sex on this one?”

 

When he woke up in the afternoon on the second day they drove to an outlet mall and debated who needed to pay for the new $29.99 wok since they all contributed to their last wok’s demise.

 

“I’m not the one who turns the gas up too high,” Isaac said, nodding his head towards Boyd.

 

“I haven’t used it in six months,” Boyd argued. “It was in good shape the last time I did.”

 

“But you eat the food we make in it,” Erica argued, “If the death of the wok was a murder, you would be considered an accomplice.”

 

In the end, Boyd and Erica pay for it together, and it is wordlessly added to the list of possessions that will belong to them when they get married and Isaac becomes a discrete person outside of their relationship and finally moves out.

 

Even if Mallou isn’t the most exhilarating place he’s been, the new staff at Jeanne’s is competent for once. The main baker he’s training is Cinda, a woman in her 50’s who prefers to work in silence, but when she does talk she tells well-edited stories about her time in the welding union. She’s easily the most likable trainee he’s worked with.

 

He didn’t even care that much when she noticed him texting Allison and asked, “Are you married?”

 

“No,” he laughed.

 

“That’s a damn shame. See, these hours won’t be a problem for me. I’m already married, I’ve got a husband who don’t care much if we share a bed what with my sleep apnea. You have sleep apnea?” she asked.

 

“I don’t?”

 

“Good, it’s hell. Working this job how are you supposed to find a wife? At this time of night, you should be out there looking for someone to love.”

 

Isaac put his phone away. He had no intention of outing himself to someone he had to share a kitchen with for the next five days, but he could still defend himself. “I dated someone while I was working here. It’s not that hard.”

 

“Dated?” Cinda replied, putting extra emphasis on the d.

 

“We didn’t break up because of this,” Isaac said, “Jeanne’s isn’t that powerful.”

 

“Who are you dating now?”

 

With no warning or conscious thought, his mind flashed to Stiles. Stiles on the train laughing, Stiles in the booth at Jeanne’s. The bagel-shaped five dollar bill that was sitting in his backpack three feet away. There was no reason for it; he wasn’t dating Stiles even little. Sure they flirted some, but neither of them ever made a move to turn it into something more. They exchanged numbers months ago, but never texted each other besides one first exchange. Isaac started to countless times, but couldn’t do it.

 

He wasn’t dating Stiles.

 

But something was happening.

 

* * *

 

 

On the third morning, he went back to the hotel in a cab paid for by Jeanne’s, feeling some dread knowing that Boyd and Erica left a few hours ago. He had 47 hours of podcasts downloaded, but it still sucked to be alone in a random town.

 

While he was at the hotel buffet waiting for his toast to toast his phone vibrated in his pocket.

 

Stiles (8:01): Hey bro

Stiles (8:01): It’s Stiles

Stiles (8:01): Your train BFF

Stiles (8:02): U alive?

Stiles (8:04): Text me back please and thank you.

 

Holy shit.

Isaac waited to text him back until he was up in the hotel room and his shoes were off, sure that a good response would come to mind by then. It did not.

 

Isaac (8:15): hi

 

The second the message sent more texts came flooding in.

 

Stiles (8:15): Oh my god!

Stiles (8:15): Oh my god!

Stiles (8:15): Thank goodness you’re alive!!

Stiles (8:15): Do you know what I’m going through right now?

Isaac (8:16): are you on the train?

Stiles (8:16): Yes no thanks to you!

Stiles (8:16): R u dead?

 

Throughout the trip, Isaac was aware that he wouldn’t see Stiles, but it didn’t occur to him that Stiles would care. He didn’t even bother to tell Stiles the week before.

 

Isaac (8:17): i’m in Wisconsin for a work thing. i’ll be back next week

Stiles (8:18): First of all, is there a flour emergency?

Stiles (8:18): Second of all, I am staunchly defending your seat with my bag and possibly my feet.

That was an entertaining picture, Stiles spreading himself over the aisle seat, glaring down anyone who came near it.

 

Isaac (8:21): not a flour emergency. i’m training the bakers at a new store.

Stiles (8:22): Dude not to be a lot but why didn’t you tell me? My mornings depend on you.

Isaac (8:23): sorry you’re bagelless

Stiles (8:24): It’s not the bagels I’m after

 

Something in his chest tightened. There was no other way to read this. Stiles liked him.

 

Stiles liked him.

 

Isaac (8:31): what are you after?

Stiles (8:33): Your fine company. It’s kind of the highlight of my day.

Isaac (8:33): mine too

 

Five screaming minutes passed before Stiles’s reply. Was he freaked out? Did he not mean it the way Isaac did? Did Stiles think he was weird? He collapsed on the hotel bed, rubbing his hand over his eyes.

 

Eventually, Isaac realized that Stiles was probably getting off the train in Lake Wind. He always said there was twenty _“_ ungodly horribly boring _”_ minutes between Isaac getting off the train and his own train stop. Finally, the message came through.

 

Stiles (8:38): NICE

Stiles (8:39): when are you getting back?

Isaac (8:43): monday. think you can defend my seat for that long?

Stiles (8:43): I’ll die trying.

 

Holy shit.

The next five days they continued to text, mostly during the time they would have spent on the train together. When Isaac woke up in the afternoon he had new texts from Stiles, providing detailed updates on his boring life as Slate. He kept himself from texting Stiles while he was at work, god knows what Cinda would say about that if she noticed.

 

He wasn’t a master texter. Most of the time he took several minutes to reply, while Stiles would shoot off ten texts in a minute. Stiles had plenty to say about everything. Isaac started sending him pictures on Snapchat of the hotel. He felt a little trapped there, unable to bill Jeanne’s for cab rides except to and from the restaurant, and it helped to get pictures back of the adventures that Stiles was trying to have all over Chicago.

 

Stiles (17:00): OFF FOR THE DAY WHAT DO YOU RECOMMEND

Isaac (17:05): in terms of what?

Stiles (17:05): Um stuff to do? Haven’t you lived in Chicago for almost 10 years?

Isaac (17:11): briarwood isn’t chicago, anyone from chicago will scream that at you if you suggest that

Stiles (17:11): Okay fine Mr. I Don’t Know Anything Everything Is Terrible and I Can’t Help You.

Isaac (17:18): i didn’t say that. if you get off on the heller stop you can visit the charter gardens. they serve liquor starting at six.

Stiles (17:18): A garden that serves whisky? Dude, I feel like you KNOW ME. Wow. Is there a wooded area because then I would feel like home. I would get my roommate to come with me if he wasn’t constantly busy as fuck. I can just imagine he’s with me.

 

He didn’t realize until they started talking like that Stiles was lonely. He was almost always alone, and frequently mentioned his roommate not being around. Isaac kind of judged his roommate for moving his friend out to Chicago then never being around. Boyd was busy, but he still made time sometimes to go to the gym with Isaac, or stick around for a house dinner. And Stiles didn’t seem to have other friends. Not that Isaac was Mr. Popular, but he didn’t seem to need them. He wasn’t as lonely.

 

For a weird two days, Isaac toyed with the idea of asking Stiles to come up to and visit. He couldn’t wait to see Stiles, and barring quitting his job that was the only way he could see him before the following Monday. Luckily he had enough sense to know that that was way too much way too son. He relied on the texts that came through in spurts. That would have to be enough until he was on the train again.

 

Stiles (19:07): You’re not going to flake out on me are you? Because the good folks of train car C might not tolerate me claiming two seats for another day

Isaac (19:08): i didn’t let anyone sit next to me for two months before you showed up. it’s possible

Stiles (19:08): That better not mean that you aren’t coming back.

Isaac (19:09): i’m definitely coming back

Stiles (19:10): Okay okay chill chill good good.

 

On Sunday morning his work was done and Chris picked him up to drive back to Chicago. The timing was perfect because most Sundays Chris was already in Wisconsin to visit his favorite gun range.

 

“Did you have fun shooting guns?” Isaac asked. Chris still had his Europe beard going strong and was wearing mirrored sunglasses. He looked like a character in a Terminator movie, even as he sipped on the Jamba Juice smoothie he picked up on the way into town.

 

“Yes, I had a very good time.”

 

Isaac waited, measured out if Chris would say more but nothing came. “Cool.”

 

“I know you’re usually asleep by now. I won’t be offended if you doze off.”

 

“No, I want to talk to you.”

 

“Oh,” Chris said, glancing over at him, “About anything in particular?”

 

“Oh. No. Just generally.”

 

He wanted to tell Chris about Stiles, even though he usually kept new people a secret until he was sure it was real. Besides, how would he explain Stiles to him?

 

_Hey Chris, I met this guy on the train and we are kind of friends and also I think he likes me. I definitely like him. He’s really funny and likes things in a way that makes me want to like them too. By the way if you were wondering why I’m taking the train it’s because the state of Illinois thinks I’m too irresponsible to drive until I pay them 960 dollars._

 

Officially all Chris knew was that Isaac couldn’t drive his car to Wisconsin. Chris had his freaky way of finding things out and could easily find out the real story, but since he had been in America for three weeks and had yet to lecture Isaac on the dangers of speeding, he hadn’t found out yet.

 

Chris asked, “What exactly is wrong with your car?”

 

Isaac yawned. “It’s 20 years old, it could be anything.”

 

His car wasn’t technically out of commission, but it had every right to be, so he wasn’t lying. He was never able to pull off an out and out lie to Chris. It wasn’t exactly a stretch to say that his car couldn’t make the two hour drive anyway. His car had a habit of stopping dead in the middle of intersections and needed a jump more often than it should.

 

Chris nodded. “If you ever wanted to buy a new car—”

 

“No thanks.”

 

“—I would help you. I never bought you a car. By the time I was your guardian you had that awful truck with the duct taped windows. And I bought Allison her first car.”

 

“You never bought me a Barbie dream house either.”

 

Chris nodded seriously. “Then I owe you a car and a Barbie dream house.”

 

“You don’t owe me anything. I’m not keeping score.” Chris had been trying to buy him a car for seven years, ever since Isaac first moved in and brought the Ford he bought with $400 and holographic Zippo. The first time Chris offered was almost a year before the adoption, and his first car hadn’t even broken down by then. It was nice, but unnecessary. “If you really want to, I’ll make space in my room for the Barbie dream house.”

 

Chris sighed. “It’s dangerous to drive an unreliable car. I would prefer you not get stranded on the side of the highway and die.”

 

“Thanks, I love you too. Seriously, I can take care of my own car.” He felt a little bad for letting Chris think that there was something wrong with his car and get all worried. Even if it was kind of nice. “It’s not that messed up, I’ll be back on the road soon.”

 

“Do you have enough money to get it fixed?” Chris asked. He glanced over and Isaac sat up before he could make a comment on how dangerous slouching down in a car was.

 

“If Boyd can figure out what’s wrong with it he’ll fix it,” he said. Still true. “And anyway, I’m getting a bonus plus overtime for coming up here this week.”

 

Suddenly it occurred to him that with the unexpected cash might be able to pay off his fines faster than he thought. He’d budgeted to pay off the fines by June, but travelling meant a lot of overtime and bonuses from two stores. Without asking he twisted around and went into Chris’s bag, pulling out his iPad.

 

“Yes Isaac, you can use my iPad,” Chris droned, keeping his eyes on the road.

 

There were fourteen possible combinations for Chris’s passcode and Isaac got it right on the first guess. He pulled up Jeanne’s intranet and logged in. “Sorry,” he said quickly to Chris.

 

Jeanne’s had a tool the predicted your next paycheck. Isaac added his last night of hours, all overtime and clicked the button that included his training bonus. It was $600 more than a normal paycheck.

 

He had more than enough money to pay off his fees. Even after rent. Hell, even after paying Allison back. He grinned. In two weeks he could be on the road again. This was five months in the making. Finally no more shelling out money for ubers or train passes or forcing Erica to take the para bus everywhere. A huge weight lifted off his chest.

 

He typed out a message to Stiles.

 

_hey! i’m getting a big bonus for this week so i can finally get my license ba—_

He stopped typing. Getting his license back meant not taking the train anymore. He deleted the message.

 

“What just happened?” Chris asked.

 

“Nothing,” Isaac turned around to put the iPad away. “I forgot to enter my hours for work.”

 

A few minutes later a text from Stiles came in.

 

Stiles (10:44): Less than 24 hours until the best duo Chicago transit has ever seen is reunited. See you soon :D D: D: D:

Stiles (10:44): Shit I mean :D :D :D

Stiles (10:45): Only the good emojis

 

_Fuck._

 

 


	9. Two Spoons

Stiles Stilinski’s life was a Victorian novel.

 

Or Shakespeare.

 

Or something.

 

When Isaac finally got back from his work trip something minute changed between them. It was one of the first real hot days he’d experienced in Chicago, and it was so humid that the air could be swallowed. Stiles took his time getting dressed, going through all the questionably clean clothes in his duffle bag trying to find the right outfit. The outfit that said, “hey look how desirable I am.”

 

The outfit was his brown lace-up shoes, grey slacks that were slim fit _not_ skinny jeans no matter what Allison said, and a green short sleeved button up that Caitlin once said brought out his eyes.

 

“You’re a huge dork,” he said to himself in the bathroom mirror, because at the hospital they were all about declaring who you are out loud.

 

He was a huge dork.

 

He nearly passed out when he saw Isaac on the train. Thank god for humidity. Isaac was wearing a tight black t-shirt with his sweater thrown over his shoulder. His arms were somehow slim and muscular at the same time and it took all Stiles had not to grab one of them just to feel him.

 

He was losing it over seeing a forearm for the first time. Victorian as hell.

 

“Hey,” Stiles said, waiting for Isaac to stand up before scooting into the window seat. “You’re alive.”

 

“I’m alive,” Isaac agreed. “Good to see you.”

 

When he sat back down they didn’t suddenly start making out in the Metra car, which to be honest Stiles was prepared for and wouldn’t fully object to.

 

Instead of grabbing his face, Isaac let his arm brush against Stiles’s arm just a second longer than usual when he handed him his bagel. Their fingers brushed together when Stiles handed him his hot chocolate. They smiled quietly one another for a few seconds and felt a new energy, the acknowledged chemistry hum in the air between them.

 

Then Isaac said, “The asshole conductor is on shift today,” and suddenly Stiles heard and smelled the hundred people sitting in the car with them and the moment popped.

 

“Good,” he said, trying to adjust to the end of his Victorian novel, “I always want to be treated like a moron first thing in the morning.”

 

“Don’t worry,” Isaac said lightly, “If he tried to fuck with you I’ll take him down.”

 

That was new too.

 

Three days passed on the train without them making out, shockingly. Any space in Stiles's brain that wasn’t taken up trying to figure out how to get them on a date was taken up with the fast approaching date that Allison was moving in and he definitely had to move out.

 

She made it more than clear that he had to be gone by then. Earlier in the wee,k she waited until Scott went to the bathroom—putting four feet and a two inch wall between them—and got real with him.

 

“Stiles, I like you,” she said over the oil popping in the frying pan.

 

“I like you too,” he said, taking a step back to avoid the hot oil.

 

Allison stirred the pork cutlets in the pan, showing no fear. Matter a fact as anything she said, “I don’t think I’ll like you if you’re still living here when I am.”

 

Speaking of terrifying women, over the weekend Malia texted him that she was moving, asking if she should be looking for a two bedroom by UT Austin, or was he not moving back in with her. Malia constantly assumed that Sitles was moving back with her any minute, no matter which 6’7” Instagod she was with a the moment. It was always more tempting than it should have been.

 

But he could have a life in one place, and Chicago had Scott. And weird pizza. And train companions. All the apartments he had seen so far were in loud buildings, or old buildings, or were too far from Scot, or were smelly. Or didn’t like his garbage credit rating.

 

So he charged airfare a few too many times? So what?

 

Scott was optimistic that the last place they hadn’t seen was _the place_. On Thursday after wor,k Allison drove him and Scott out to check it out.

 

It was wide and airy, starting with a living room with an entire wall of windows. The walls had chipped wood paneling and the realtor showing it to them told him multiple times that it was a violation of the lease to mount a TV. The kitchen was open and had an oven that Allison was blown away by.

 

“You should get this place for the oven,” she said seriously. Of course, at that point she was 11 days from moving into Scott’s apartment and would have also been thrilled if Stiles moved into a box at the bottom of Lake Michigan. It was shiny chrome, brand new with gas burners.

 

“I don’t cook though.”

 

“You will with this oven.”

 

What sold the place was the wood paneling, just like in his dad’s house. That and the realtor seemed like she was trying to lease it before the apocalypse tomorrow. She practically shoved an unsigned lease in his hands.

 

“Your income is over three times the rent,” she said, snapping her gum as she talked, “The owners are gonna love you. Promise. We can just sign this right here.“

 

Stiles blinked, slowly turning the lease over in his hands. “My credit—“ Allison elbowed him sharply.

 

The realtor waved the words away. “Don’t matter, if you got the money you’re good.”

 

“And it’s _furnished,_ ” Allison added.

 

He tried to negotiate a month to month lease, even though he could practically feel Scott’s concerned eyes boring into him. The realtor wasn’t happy, but she called the owners and settled for a six month lease. She emailed him a revised lease twenty minutes after the showing.

 

While Scott and Allison went to the library for some studying and grant writing, Stiles spread out on the couch and read the lease on his laptop. He’d never read a lease agreement before. So he didn’t know how terrifying it was.

 

The move in date was less than a week later and he _legally had to stay there and pay rent_ for six months no matter what happened.

 

If he let a dog in without written notice he would be fined $180 a day.

 

No more than twelve people were allowed in the apartment at a time.

 

And by far the scariest, the lease listed a number of situations that would not exempt him from the lease ending in _death._

He texted Isaac

 

Stiles (7:48 PM): Are leases supposed to be terrifying.

Isaac (7:51 PM): did you find a place?

Stiles (7:51 PM): Not necessarily I’m basically making a blood oath. Is it normal to be fined for having a plant without written notice.

Isaac (7:51 PM): idk that sounds weird

Stiles (7:52 PM): Does your lease have a clause about not being allowed out of it if you die?

Isaac (7:53 PM): uh no but i don’t actually have a lease. my friends stepdad owns the house and i just pay him

Stiles (7:54 PM): Ok but for other places you’ve lived.

Isaac (7:54 PM): i’ve only lived here since moving out? i can ask my ex.

Stiles (7:55 PM): No don’t do that because I’m now more concerned with HOW MUCH SHIT YOU GAVE ME FOR NOT FINDING AN APARTMENT WHEN YOU’VE NEVER DONE IN YOURSELF.

Isaac (7:56 PM): are you actually mad

Stiles (7:57 PM): …..no. Maybe ask your ex.

 

Half an hour later he got a text back that a lease that was binding after death was totally normal, normal adulthood and Stiles should just sign it. He didn’t trust Isaac’s unspecified ex at all, so when Allison and Scott came back around ten he asked them too.

 

Allison looked at him suspiciously. “You’re the second person to ask me that today.”

 

Yeah, Stiles thought, it’s a concept demanding questions. “Who else asked you?”

 

“My brother.” Okay, definitely not Isaac then. “But as I told him, leases look brutal on paper but as long as you pay them they don’t give a rats ass what you do. Don’t worry about it.”

 

Scott laughed a little, “Worrying is Stiles specialty.”

 

Stiles shut his laptop and got off the couch. “Yeah well, someone has to think about these things.” He stuck his laptop back in his messenger bag and started fishing for his tennis shoes. Yeah, of course, he was worried about a legal contact that extended past his death, what else was he supposed to do? “I’m going for a walk.”

 

Scott put his bag down on the counter. “I’ll come with you.”

 

The street was lit up with street lights and closed signs. Scott lived above a Beauty Shop that was the only store that was still open, and voices carried out to the sidewalk. The rest of the street was shut down and the storefronts were gated off. They were the only ones in the street.

 

They hadn’t been alone together for a long time.

 

Stiles was already in pajamas but he had his wallet on him. For some reason, his plan before Scott decided to come was to catch the el to Jeanne’s and see if Isaac had shown up for his shift yet. Scott scanned the street and said, “There’s an ice cream place a few blocks back that’s open. Let’s go there.”

 

“Yeah, sounds good.”

 

No surprise, the old woman with a neck tattoo who ran the ice cream shop knew Scott and adored him, just like half the people in the city. She came out from behind the counter to give him a hug that made him stumble back.

 

“Jaele,” he said, “This is my best friend Stiles.”

 

“Best friend Stiles,” she said, sounding full on delighted, “You get whatever you want on the house. I’m closing up but you boys can sit for as long as you want.”

 

Maybe to be an asshole, Stiles ordered the largest sundae with six scoops of ice cream, hot fudge and butterfingers. Jaele didn’t blink. Scott went to sit by the window, but Stiles ignored that and headed to the back. They took a seat.

 

Scott ordered a rainbow sherbet in a waffle cone that was already dripping. He licked around the edge. “Why didn’t you want to sit by the window?”

 

“Are you kidding?” Stiles asked, “In front of the big glass target?” There was no way Scott hadn’t noticed that police sirens hadn’t stopped since they stepped outside.

 

“They’re all going west,” Scott said, reading his mind, “We should be okay here. Nothing's ever happened to me.”

 

They never talked about it, not even casually. Stiles blamed Scott’s unrelenting need to make the best of everything, to move on and make it all okay. They talked about Stiles’s symptoms at the time, Scott’s recovery but over the years it all became an abstract _event_ that may as well have happened to some proxy version of themselves.

 

So much to say, Stiles couldn’t say “ _Why is it that I’m the one who is most afraid when you’re the one who got shot and I’m just the one who watched?”_ His life was made up entirely of things he wanted to say but didn’t and it was totally uncool.

 

Instead, he said, “Yeah, I’m pretty sure the gun-wielding maniacs aren’t limited to west of us.”

 

He was allowed to say that.

 

Scott shrugged and continued licking his quickly dissolving sherbet. “I don’t know, I’m not really worried about here. The place Allison goes to work, that stresses me out.”

 

He pictured Allison telling off anyone who had the nerve to try to mug her. “I’m sure Allison can handle herself.”

 

“Yeah,” Scott said, “That’s what she says.” He cleared his throat, “You know it’s not that I want you to move out right.”

 

“Tell Allison that,” Stiles said, only kind of joking. “Don’t worry man, I knew from the beginning that this was he deal. “

 

When he charged his plane ticket to his last credit card he didn’t know what is plan was two months later. All he knew was that Beacon Hills hadn’t felt right since he was sixteen and decided to visit his dad at the station on the wrong night and brought Scott with him.

 

He used to be so sharp, he would have ten different plans for what to do next, but part of him hoped that something would fall through and he could just stay with Scott. Someone needed to make sure he didn’t study his brains out.

 

That’s how he explained staying in town to his dad. Dad was thrilled that he was considering signing a death-binding contract, he thought it was meant Stiles was settling down. But he was just keeping an eye on Scott.

 

“Okay,” Scott said. He finished off his sherbet and took the extra spoon Stiles brought and started in on the sundae. “So, do you think you’re going to sign the lease? That place is just like your dad’s house, and it’s a straight shot from here on the 11 bus.”

 

It was just like his dad’s house, and Scott knew that. Scott knew him better than anyone.

 

“Is this what you thought your life was going to be like?” Stiles asked, “Like, when we were growing up or in high school.”

 

Scott took a minute to think about it. “No,” he said, “No not really.”

 

“What did you think it was going to be like?”

 

“I didn’t think I’d leave Beacon Hills at all,” he said, “I didn’t even consider it. I thought, you know with me working at the clinic I’d go to community college and become a real vet tech and that’d be it.”

 

Scott had never told him that. When they were in high school before, they talked about going away to college together and getting an apartment in a city. Even though that wasn’t what happened, he felt a little betrayed that Scott had a different plan all along.

 

“But after what happened at the station,” he continued, “I survived when I maybe shouldn’t have.”

 

He couldn’t believe Scott was talking about this, here in an ice cream store with Jaele eavesdropping. “You should have,” Stiles said, “Obviously you should have.”

 

“But I almost didn’t,” Scott said, emotion at the edge of his voice, “And I did. So I thought, okay I’m supposed to do something.”

 

It went unsaid was that something became going to law school so he could crusade for the marginalized. Scott’s drive to save the downtrodden went into overdrive after the station. When Stiles complained about it to one of his subsequent therapists, she said “That’s a kind of trauma reaction too.”

 

He dismissed her at the time. “Are you glad it turned out this way?” he asked.

 

“Yeah,” Scott said, “I am. I love Easton. It led me to Allison. I’m just bummed it meant we were so far aware from each other since high school.”

 

Stiles shook his head, “I’ve been doing it like Carmen Sandiego. Even if you were back home, I wouldn’t have been there.”

 

“What about you?”

 

“What?”  


“Is this what _you_ thought you life would be like?”

 

No, obviously not. When he was growing up he thought for sure he’d be a cop or, later, an FBI agent. When a single question on a background check fucked that up for the rest of his life he never really figured out what plan B was.

 

“I travel more than I thought I would,” Stiles hedged, “I don’t know, what kid plans to have a psychotic disorder?” he raised his voice to test if Jaele was eavesdropping. He heard a small clatter behind the counter that confirmed she was. “I thought I’d have more adventure I guess? We used to get into all those scrapes but now I’m a totally lame adult.”

 

Scott scraped up the rest of the ice cream and Stiles noticed he’d stopped eating. If he was sixteen he’d be demolishing this ice cream. God, he was such a lame grup.

 

“I think everyone feels this way,” Scott said, “Allison thought she’d be an FBI agent too.”

 

Did Isaac think he’d grow up to be a baker? That was one of the first things Stiles teased him about.

 

“So anyway,” Scott said, “Are you going to sign the lease?”

 

* * *

 

“I signed the lease.”

 

Isaac threw his hands up. “Oh shit! Let me see.”

 

Stiles grinned and pulled out his phone. “You’re not allowed to say anything negative about my new sweet pad.”

 

“Dude, you could have signed a lease on a box at the bottom of Lake Michigan and I’d still be happy for you.”

 

He took Stiles’s phone and started swiping through the photos in the realty listing.

He zoomed in on the oven. “Is that stovetop gas?”

 

“I guess?” Stiles scooted closer to see the photo, pressing their shoulders together. It was still hot, and Isaac was wearing a black t-shirt again so their skin was pressing together. It was the Victorian version of a fooling around. “It looks like it. That’s fancy good, right?”

 

“ _Very_ fancy good,” Isaac agreed.

 

The bedroom at the back was bigger than Scott’s entire apartment and it came with a queen bed and bedside tables with gold painted drawer pulls. The whole place felt warm and lived in. Like living there would turn Stiles into a professor with philosophies on the city’s budget.

 

The neighborhood was south west of Pine Wood, a ten minute drive from Scott. Stiles signed the lease for the comic book shop just down the block and the 24 hour 7-Eleven across the street. It ticked every box on his wish list.

 

Isaac handed the phone back to Stiles. “Good job. You’ve accomplished the basic adult task of finding a place to live.”

 

“You have no right to talk! And I said nothing negative.”

 

“That wasn’t about the apartment, that was about you.”

 

“I’m so not impressed by your constant negativity anymore,” Stiles said, making a show of putting his phone away and cross his arms.

 

“Wow, I’m so sorry,” Isaac said, overly sincere, his smile faltering a little. “When are you moving?”

 

“The lease starts in a week, so I guess then.”

 

He nodded. “And it’s on West Mavis?”

 

“If you can picture it, there’s a giant billboard with a fetus on it down the street from me.”

 

He was sure that Isaac knew the neighborhood better than he did, and was going through where it was compared to the train line and Slate.

 

“I figured it out,” he said, before Isaac could start planning a future without him, “Now that it’s warm out I can bike to the Pineland Station, and nothing would change except I’d just get buffer.”

 

“There’s a bus two blocks away from your new place that goes straight to Slate.”

 

How in the world did he know that? “Yeah, but, gross. No one wants to go on a bus.”

 

Isaac nodded, but Stiles could see he was holding something back. What? Did he not want Stiles to come on the train anymore? Was this an easy out? Oh shit oh shit. This whole time Stiles had been the one coming on strong; he was the one who sat down next to Isaac in the first place. What if Isaac was just being polite? What if Stiles was making him uncomfortable in a public place and he had no interest in him at all not even as train acquaintances and he was a giant fucking dick who couldn’t take a hint.

 

Isaac opened his backpack and pulled out some papers. He handed them to Stiles.

 

They were DMV documents, or courtroom documents Stiles couldn’t quickly tell the difference with his head buzzing the way it was. He was losing his edge.

 

“I got my license back.” Isaac said. “My car insurance is killing me, and I can’t afford that and buying another train pass.”

 

The thousands of thoughts screaming through his head evaporated leaving one behind: Isaac was leaving.

 

“So,” Isaac said, “You…if you were thinking you’d buy a June train pass just—I mean not just to see but if that was a factor. There’s that.”

 

The first day of June was three days away. Almost without thinking—definitely without thinking because he wouldn’t do this at all if he was thinking—Stiles brushed his hands over Isaac’s forearm. “So…today and tomorrow are our last train rides together?”

 

Isaac snaked his hand up and squeezed Stiles’s hand tight. “Yeah. I guess we better plan our first date.”


	10. And Beyond

Stiles (3:14 AM): Do you realize that it took us 2.5 months to plan a date

Isaac (3:47 AM): the first month we didn’t talk it doesn’t count

Isaac (3:47 AM): why are you awake?

Stiles (8:23): I was in the middle of a campaign!

Stiles (8:23): You’re not the only person with a night life!

 

 

When the paperwork came back that Isaac is officially licensed through the state of Illinois and is permitted to drive without going to jail again, Boyd decided they needed to find a way to honor the moment.

 

“This phase of your life is over,” he said over a rare dinner they are all home for. Cornbread and an extremely expensive attempt at Jackfruit “pulled pork” that Erica refused to pretend was good. “We need to honor it.”

 

“I don’t think so,” Isaac said.

 

“We could burn your train passes,” Erica suggested.

 

“ _No,”_ Isaac said quickly. He didn’t know what he wanted to do with the train passes, but burning them in one of Boyd’s pseudo religious services was not one of them.

 

“We can’t,” Boyd said, “Isaac met his new boy on the train, he’s going to hide those in his little drawer where he keeps all his feelings.”

 

“Please don’t talk about me that way,” Isaac said. “We can clean my car since it smells like a drug den now.”

 

It took three days of airing it out and four cans of cover spay to get the rid of the smell. Hotboxing in the car seemed like a no brainer when he first lost his license, since Boyd got pickier about them smoking in the house now that he was in med school and an even bigger dick than he was before. He refused to help them clean the car even though it was technically his fault.

 

“I didn’t tell you to smoke in here,” he said watching from over the firepit where he was burning Isaac’s court documents. Purely for his own benefit, since Isaac didn’t give a shit what happened to them. “It’s not my fault you two act like you’re still in high school.”

 

“You’re such a dick,” Erica said from where she was fishing out receipts from under the backseat. “You’re so lucky I love you.”

 

The car was in good condition by the day Isaac was going to pick Stiles up at the train station for their first date. He tried to sleep that morning when he got home, but found that he couldn’t. It wasn’t totally unusual. Most of the time he could badger his brain into falling asleep no matter what time it was, but there were some days that sleeping wasn’t an option, and when that happened he cleaned. He spent the day cleaning out the kitchen, listening to a podcast about Christian media. He tried not to think of Stiles until it got to the time that Stiles thought he was waking up and the texts started pouring in.

 

A week had passed since the last time he rode the train and he and Stiles had been in near constant communication since. His pace at Jeanne’s was totally thrown off because whenever he heard his phone ding, he stopped working and texted Stiles until he realized that he had a job to do.

 

He and Danny weren’t big texters. They tried to call each other once a day, but with the time difference in San Francisco and Isaac being on the opposite schedule from the entire world, they missed a lot of days. Danny used to joke that he should quit so they could have just one conversation, and Isaac used to tell Danny to find some night job for tech idiots and then their only conversation of the week would turn into a fight.

 

He tried not to think too much into what was going on with him and Stiles. They might go on one date and find out they had no chemistry when they were standing up. But if they turn into something real, it probably helped that Stiles already knew Isaac’s schedule down to the minute, so he wouldn’t accuse him of changing the game halfway through.

 

Who said stuff like that? Fucking assholes who regretted sticking with their high school dropout boyfriend who refused to get on an airplane to visit them in California which probably sucked as a state.

 

Stiles lived in Chicago, at least for now so that wasn’t a problem.

 

Stiles proposed about twenty versions of what their first date should be. He kept changing the plan before Isaac had the chance to reply that it sounded fine—going to a candy store, going to the top of a parking garage, going on a walk in the forest preserve all sounded fine. Weird, but fine.

 

Finally they settled on Isaac picking Stiles up from the Briarwood train station, and deciding what to do from there. It meant not going to the gym, and as he drove Isaac’s fingers drummed on the wheel and he rolled his shoulders, feeling energy that demanded to leave somehow.

 

The Briarwood train station was familiar. The tracks were built above the road and he drove through a tunnel that was covered in locally sanctioned street art. He puled into a parking space and waited.

 

And waited.

 

And cracked his knuckles and rolled his head and wished he’d smoked before and waited.

 

Then the train came through and Isaac took out his phone quickly.

 

Isaac (5:03): still want to hang out?

 

Almost instantly a reply came through.

 

Stiles (5:04): Yes??? I’m getting off the train in bwood so I hope you’re here

 

Isaac smiled.

 

Isaac (5:04): i’m in the green toyota on the north side of the tracks.

 

Stiles (5:04): green? North? Toyota? Are you a nature man?

 

Isaac started to type a reply, something not as witty as Stiles would come up with, when he saw Stiles coming down the ramp. He was wearing great button up shirt with the sleeves rolled up that showed off his lightly muscled arms which Stiles referred to as “medical marvel” since he never worked out. Stiles caught his eye and jumped up and down once, waving at him?

 

He was so fucking good looking.

 

In a split second decision Isaac got out of the car. Staying in the car and waiting was relationship stuff. This was a first date, he had to step it up. Stiles jogged down the ramp. As he got closer Isaac could see that his hair was sticking in every direction, like he’d been running his hands through is all day. Self consciously, Isaac plucked at the plain blue t-shirt Erica helped him pick out.

 

“Dude,” Stiles said when he was a few yards away, “I feel like I’m being welcomed home from abroad.” Stiles walked right up to him and, without ceremony or a word, put his hand on Isaac’s elbow, leaned up and kissed him.

 

It was quick and casual, like they had kissed a hundred times before and a quick peck in a train station parking lot was nothing to squeal about. Isaac pulled away laughing. It wasn’t the right reaction but Stiles had changed the game, they weren’t supposed to kiss until after whatever it was they were going to do.

 

“Oh shit sorry,” Stiles said, laughing. “That was like, I just did that didn’t I?”

 

Isaac grinned. Just because he changed the rules didn’t mean it was a bad thing. He could recover. Especially if it meant they could start again. “Yeah, kind of. Should we…try again?”

 

He reached out and pulled Stiles closer and leaned down for another kiss. Stiles reached up and gripped the back of his neck, pulling in closer. Electricity charged through his body and he pulled away before he got too charged up in a city parking lot.

 

Stiles pulled away, smiling ridiculously. “I love that our first kiss was in front of a train.”

 

“Me too,” Isaac said, “Do you want to go find an abandoned train car to fuck in, or should we do like, the date thing?”

 

“The date thing,” Stiles said, still smiling loopily. “Don’t want the trains to think we’re sluts.”

 

How was it already going this well? His body was thrumming with something like happiness. Half of Isaac wanted to drive off before it could go badly, but by the time he really had to contend with that thought, Stiles was in his car, so he got in after him.

 

“Jesus Christ it smells like pot in here,” Stiles said. He sniffed dramatically, and leaned his head into the backseat and inhaled sharply. “Was your morning date with Snoop Dog?”

 

“It doesn’t,” Isaac protested. He couldn’t smell anything, and he was a little offended that Stiles could. He and Erica had put serious work into getting the smell out.

 

“It really does my friend,” Stiles said, rolling down a window. “Try not to get pulled over.”

 

“Where do you want to go?” Isaac said, before he went into a rant about the car smell. “The, what was the latest? The tile store?”

 

Stiles put on his seatbelt. “Actually, if you wanted I could make you my prize winning mac and cheese. Today at work sucked—the past five minutes have been fucking stellar but still. I kind of just want to go home if that’s cool with you?”

 

It sounded very cool. Isaac knew from google maps where Stiles’s apartment was, so he pulled out of the parking lot and turned west.

 

“But first we should go to the grocery store and get some ingredients,” Stiles said.

 

“Yeah, sure there’s a good one near here,” Isaac said, rerouting.

 

“And also somewhere that sells pans. And spoons. And bowls.”

 

 

They ended up at a Bed Bath and Beyond where it became clear that Stiles had disposable income and no housewares. In every aisle there are sixty things that Stiles needed that he sheepishly put in in the cart. He chose the cheapest of everything, but bought a lot of it. Isaac stopped him from wasting his money on crappy pans and took the liberty of picking some more durable options.

 

His lips were still tingling from the kiss, and he looked for excused to keep touching Stiles, touching his arm to get his attention at every opportune moment. He really was coming across as too obvious, but somehow he thought that Stiles wouldn’t think he was being weird. Stiles was touching him too. When he ran his hand over Isaac’s back in the spoon aisle, he nearly broke down and suggested they leave the store and go find that train car to fuck in.

 

To that, at least, Stiles was oblivious.

 

“I didn’t mean to take you on an errand with me,” Stiles said as he debated between washcloths. Isaac reached over and grabbed a stack of the cheapest washcloths and threw them in the basket.

 

“I don’t care,” Isaac said. “It’s kind of fun. You’re really bad at this and it’s good I’m here to help you.”

 

After bed bath and beyond they went to the Jewel, which turned into an exercise in not commenting on all the garbage food Stiles bought. Nearly all the food was frozen, French fries, French toast sticks, strudels, white castle burgers, meatballs.

 

In the pasta aisle Stiles took his time debating which box macaroni and cheese to buy, picking up three boxes at a time and reading the back.

 

“What’s happening right now?” Isaac asked.

 

“I’m trying to decide which is the best for my guest,” Stiles said, “Do you prefer Kraft or Annies?”

 

Isaac shrugged. “Neither? I’ve never had either.”

 

Stiles dropped all the boxes and Isaac quickly stepped back to avoid them. “You’ve never had either? Ever? Are you not American?”

 

“Lactose intolerant remember?” Isaac said. Even though the real answer was that he’d had hundreds of boxes of macaroni, but they were always the 33 cent boxes with the pig on the cover. Growing up, and living on his own, brand names were an unneccesary expense, and Chris would never buy a box of pasta with powdered cheese.

 

“Almond milk, bro. It is so good you’re dating me, I’m going to save you from yourself”

 

In the end Stiles got one of each brand name and announced he was going to make all of them.

 

“Do you want to go to the produce aisle?” Isaac suggested when Stiles horrifyingly pushed the cart towards checkout despite not having a single fruit or vegetable in his cart.

 

“What for? We don’t need any of that for Mac and Cheese.”

 

“You—we at least need to make potatoes. Let me buy a bag of gold potatoes for the side.”

 

“I don’t know why we need potatoes, but deal, go get your potatoes.”

 

Isaac bought potatoes, and broccoli and soy sauce for the sides and ignored Stiles when he tried to protest the broccoli. With enormous effort, Isaac managed not to point out that Stiles was going to die of scurvy before the date was over. When it came time to ring up Stiles checked out without a quiver, and Isaac was reminded again that Stiles had a college degree and a professional job. And way more money than him.

 

What would Stiles think of his small, cracking house on the west side, with the chain link fence and the coupons taped to the inside of their front door? What if Stiles started talking about college things and was disappointed that Isaac didn’t have anything to contribute?

 

Stile swiped his credit card with panache, then begrudgingly inserted the chip when the cashier told him it didn’t work. “Okay, so we go to my place to make the mac and to make the cheese. Or your place if it’s closer?”

 

“Your place,” Isaac said.

 

At Stiles’s place, a German architecture walkup, they had to make three trips to walk all the stuff Stiles bought to the third floor. The living room was nearly as big as the one in their house, but it was empty. There was a black suede couch and matching chair, and a large television on a stand with the empty TV box standing behind it.

 

Isaac waited in the living room while Stiles put the groceries away. His kitchen opened to the living room and had tons of counter space, with a miniature oven that Isaac wasn’t sure could fit a casserole dish. His fridge was magnetic, and Stiles had stuck fast food magnets on there to hold up a note that said _ICE 524-063._ It was oddly pragmatic for someone as all over the place as Stiles, and Isaac thought of the card in his wallet with Allison’s number on it. Stiles put the excessive macaroni boxes in a cabinet with several boxes of pasta. Isaac took in as many details as possible of Stiles’s life in case he didn’t come over again.

“Ok, so wild suggestion,” Stiles said. He held up a purple and a blue box of macaroni, “Since you have gone without Kraft and Annies—could you imagine—we can make both and your life will get better and better.”

 

Isaac shoved his way into the kitchen, pulling the broccoli out of the cabinet Stiles mistakenly put it in. “Let me make the broccoli first, you don’t have enough pots to do them all at once.”

 

While he boiled the broccoli Stiles lounged against the fridge and watched him work.

 

“How do you know how to do this?”

 

“I just do, I’m a functioning adult,” Isaac replied, “Have you just been making yourself macaroni every night?”

 

“No! There’s a Taco Bell across the street!” Stiles balked. “In my defense, I just moved here a few days ago. I’m still figuring out where my spoons are. And buying spoons. But I have spoons now. We can’t all be master bakers _and_ chefs.”

 

“No one’s master anything,” Isaac said, giving the broccoli a stir. “I just know how to make a handful of things.”

 

“You’re a master baker enough to be responsible for feeding the commuters of the near west side. How did you get started at Jeanne’s anyway?”

 

Isaac shrugged. “I was working at the Jewel in the bakery section decorating cakes. They wouldn’t give me full time hours, and Erica saw the listing for the Jeanne’s job online, so I took it.”

 

“Yeah, but, the overnight thing. Didn’t that give you some kind of pause?”

 

Isaac shrugged again. He could shock Stiles and say that one of his first jobs growing up was digging graves in the middle of the night at the cemetery his father managed. He could say in a droning voice that whenever his father asked him to, he would drive the hour trip to the cemetery with the keys to the backhoe on a cord on his wrist, and dig some dead person’s grave while listening to episodes of his and his brothers favorite radio show that Camden ripped off the internet and downloaded to his iPod three days before he left. That he did that before he was old enough to drive or old enough to work, and the first time he did it he was so wide awake the next day in his eighth grade homeroom he thought he’d never sleep again.

 

It wasn’t first date material.

 

“I’m good at all nighters,” Isaac said instead. “I used to work at O’Hare pushing people in wheelchairs, and I’d get scheduled on rotating shifts including overnights. At least with this job I’m always doing overnight, and can manage my schedule around it.”

 

Stiles whistled. “Duuude, I’m good at all nighters to. Actually, depending on who you ask I’m really bad at them. It stresses my dad the fuck out whenever I’m awake past twelve.”

 

Isaac poked around the cabinets and realized that Stiles didn’t have a colander, which would make draining the broccoli more difficult, but not impossible. He carefully tiled the pot over the sink, using the lid to catch the broccoli and let the water drain out.

 

“Why are you bad at all nighters?” he asked.

 

“Um,” Stiles said, “I had some mental health stuff when I was a teenager that involved me not sleeping for a long time—like weeks. So now it’s like, a symptom when I don’t sleep.”

 

Isaac stood there with the pot tilted in his hands, trying to decide what to say. Stiles hadn’t mentioned anything about being mentally ill before, and Isaac didn’t really know anyone with a mental illness. At least, not one that they talked about. “That’s…that sucks?” he settled on.

 

“Yeah, it does,” Stiles agreed, “What are you going to do with the broccoli now?”

 

“I’m going to toss it with soy sauce and garlic. Where’s your garlic?” Isaac asked, relieved to be moving off a topic he didn’t feel ready to handle.

 

“What makes you think I have garlic?”

 

“You don’t have _garlic?_ ”

 

Half an hour later they had two bowl of macaroni and a plate of broccoli sans garlic. The kitchen table was covered in half full plastic bags and discarded delivery boxes, so they at on the couch. Isaac took a hearty helping of the broccoli and a spoonful of each macaroni. Stiles did the opposite.

 

Stiles groaned when he bit into the first head of broccoli. “I didn’t know this could taste this good.”

 

“Yeah, some people don’t know how to season,” Isaac said, “It’s a crime.”

 

“It _is_ a crime. I totally would have eaten broccoli before now if I had know that it could taste like this. Dude, try your macaroni and tell me which one you like better.”

 

Isaac speared the white macaroni first because it was a more natural color. The orange macaroni probably had food dye and it was probably going to make him sick or give him heartburn or something but he took one piece just to make Stiles happy. As predicted in tasted like food dye and white flour and Isaac couldn’t help but spit it out into a napkin.

 

Stiles rolled his head and took the rest of the orange macaroni onto his plate. “More for me then. I take it you like the Annie’s better?”

 

“Yep,” Isaac said, then ate the rest of the broccoli.

 

He’d been wondering the whole night when they were going to kiss again, and when they were doing the dishes (Stiles somehow had sponges but no soap), Stiles sidled up to him and wrapped his arm around his waist. “This is a waste of time,” he said, “Want to hang out on the couch and watch YouTube videos?”

 

They moved to the couch but never turned on the TV. Isaac pulled up close to Stiles and put his fingers through his hair. “Is this alright?” he asked.

 

“This is super alright, are you good?” Stiles asked.

 

“Super good,” Isaac said mockingly, then leaned in and kissed him. They moved fluidly, Stiles’s hands roving over Isaac’s back and arms. Isaac found a spot on Stiles’s neck and when he kissed it Stiles groaned so he stayed there, his hand moving up under Stiles’s shirt as he did.

 

Stiles did the same, eventually pulling on the hem of his shirt, asking “Should we lose this?” and Isaac said “Yeah, yours too?” and Stiles agreed. Stiles kissed his fucking eyebrows and no one had ever touched him there much less kissed him, and for a minute Isaac couldn’t believe Stiles was a real person. He floated in the moment, reeling from all the unexpected touches until Stiles touched the scar tissue on his right elbow and Isaac snapped back into the moment.

 

It was a question mark shaped scar, surgical, and Isaac stopped moving while Stiles traced it, waiting for the question. Stiles had asked every other question a person could think to ask so far, and the question was obvious “How did you get this?” Of course Stiles would stop a make out session to ask something intrusive and fucking annoying and mood killing.

 

But he didn’t. Stiles took his fingers off the scar and tried to make eye contact, but Isaac leaned forward and hooked his chin over Stiles’s shoulder, refusing. “Should we stop?” Stiles asked.

 

“Do you want to stop?” Isaac asked, his jaw pressing against Stiles’s back.

 

“No, not at all, this is totally bomb,” Stiles said, removing his hand from Isaac’s right arm entirely and moving it to hover over his chest.

 

Relief flooded over Isaac. He leaned back and kissed Stiles’s shoulder blade. “Let’s not then.”

 

Eventually they came up for air and did watch Youtube videos. Their tastes were pretty different, but intersected at pseudo-scientific investigations into the supernatural and they settled in to watch a 45 minute documentary on Big Foot, pressed against on another on the couch. Isaac slung his arm around Stiles, marveling at the fact that he was allowed to so quickly. It felt unreal that they had made this leap from being dudes who talked to each other on the train to dude who made out and snuggled on a couch together. He was sure that it wouldn’t last, that Stiles probably would get burned out on how picky and rude he was and move on, but for now it was good and he tried to let it be good.

 

All too soon it got dark and Isaac realized he had to leave for work.

 

“It is fundamentally unfair that you have to leave right now,” Stiles whined, pulling his shirt back on while Isaac searched the apartment for his shoes. “Let’s go to the Jewel and just pick up a bunch of bagels. Jeanne’s won’t know the difference.”

 

“I think I’m better than the crap Jewel sells,” Isaac said. He found his shoes and started pulling them on. His heart pounded at the evidence that Stiles had enjoyed their time together, and he didn’t want it to end too. “We could do something tomorrow?”

 

“Tomorrow isn’t soon enough,” Stiles said, totally serious, “but it will have to do.”

 

 

 

 


	11. It Finally Happens

The Chillest and Best Dates Stiles Went on in Recent Memory(a)(b)

 

  1. Going to Stiles’s apartment and making pizza then watching Star Wars
  2. Meeting at the train station and going to the hardware store to buy “basic cleaning supplies that any functioning adult should have” then going to Stiles’s house
  3. Meeting in Lake Wind and going to the Ikea for four hours to buy a set of mugs then going home
  4. Going to city hall to look up past tenants of Stiles’s apartment to determine which asshole installed the plastic countertop
  5. Driving to a beach up north and watching the crowd from Isaac’s car, eating Chinese food they picked up on the way
  6. Hitting up the library for information about the creepy building across the street
  7. Isaac teaching Stiles how to make muffins then getting very amped up about every milligram of flour (part 1)
  8. Walking around the perimeter of the lagoons, guessing which spot has the most bodies
  9. Making pasta and pesto from scratch and it was totally worth it
  10. Hitting up the library to look up newspaper articles about the Great Chicago Fire
  11. Driving around the Ravines, taking turns playing music off each others phones
  12. Walking around the forest preserve in the rain, playing at looking for big foot
  13. Hitting up the library for more information about big foot
  14. Stiles teaching Isaac how to code
  15. Stiles teaching Isaac how to code (part 2)
  16. Stiles teaching Isaac how to code (part 3)
  17. Stiles wishing he hadn’t taught Isaac how to code while they play the impossible game Isaac made with the awful music
  18. Isaac teaching Stiles how to make muffins then getting very amped up about every milligram of flour then fully taking over because Stiles is going to ruin it (part 2)
  19. Watching every episode of Start Wars (even the prequels) in release date order over a weekend



 

  * (a) Fooling around featured in all of these dates to some degree
  * (b) It is probably illegal to have these many stellar dates over a three week period



 

 

 

So wow.

 

Here’s the thing.

 

Being in a relationship can’t save anyone’s life, but it sure can make it more fun.

 

Stiles wasn’t sure if he was in a relationship, but he was in a “hang out with Isaac every single day and make out and do stuff together and text nonstop” and that was something.

 

Three weeks had passed since their first date, and nearly every day Isaac picked him up from the train station and they ran each others errands and made dinner at Stiles’ apartment until Isaac had to spirit away to work.

 

Stiles felt good. Like, really good. Like float away consider cancelling his upcoming appointment with a new therapist tell the world he was happy good.

 

Which why it was weird that he didn’t tell his dad or Scott what was going on.

 

It wasn’t that he wasn’t out. He had to come out several times to both his dad and Scott when he was in high school because neither of them believed him. They later apologized for that, Dad for one thought of a second that his father not understanding his “true self” was part of what made him snap. Stiles had to set him straight.

 

Or bi.

 

Ha.

 

But he still didn’t tell them about Isaac, partially because they didn’t ask. At one point Dad commented that this was the longest that Stiles had been single since he was seventeen and Stiles coughed his way through an answer and moved on.

 

It was high drama for sure, the stuff of YA novels. But Stiles figured if he blathered on to everyone about Isaac, then maybe the magic would end. It wasn’t that he was ashamed of Isaac—he totally didn’t get what someone as smart and hardworking and funny as Isaac saw in him. It was that he was afraid if became public it became real, and if it became real then there was just a countdown until it ended.

 

Isaac for one didn’t ever ask about Scott or his dad, or even mention his own family or roommates that often. When they were together they were focused on cooking, or finding the right towels or Stiles’s bathroom or looking up the more certifiable information on the reported haunting in the Victorian two blocks from Stiles’s place.

 

Sometimes their dates ended at the library, looking up microfilm on local history. Stiles felt exhilarated to be with someone who had the same omnidirectional obsession with learning more about anything at all.

 

“I used to want to be a librarian,” Isaac said one day, starting at the projected image of a newspaper clipping about a fire on Stiles’s block in 1929. “They get to do stuff like this all the time, for money.”

 

“You totally can,” Stiles said, latching on. “This is a city of universities, there’s got to be a program in one of them.”

 

Isaac snorted. “Yeah right. You need six years of college to be a librarian. I did two semesters at the community college and I hated every minute of it.”

 

“Dude I didn’t know you went to college.”

 

Isaac rolled his eyes. “Don’t sound so surprised. My dad made me. The deal was I could drop out of high school if I went straight to community college, so I did. It was better but not by much.”

 

Stiles shouldered his way in front of the screen so he could see more of the article. He leaned in, squinting to read the text, badly hiding that all his focus was on Isaac. “I loved college. It’s just learning all the time, with way less of the bullshit of high school. If I could I’d stay there forever. Work sucks so much worse than school.”

 

“Work is ten times better than school,” Isaac said.

 

“You love learning, I can’t believe you feel that way,” Stiles said.

 

“I just do,” Isaac said defensively, “Can we focus on how your block is 100% haunted?”

 

“Yeah, of course,” Stiles said, sensing he should back off. He was basically questioning all of Isaac’s life choices, but fuck now that he saw it he wanted to spend all his energy convincing Isaac to become the world’s sexiest librarian. But he got that he needed to back off so he did.

 

Isaac pushed his buttons sometimes too. Without meaning to. Stiles bit by bit revealed that he was totally crazy, never fully revealing the extent of it. When he couldn’t hang out on a Thursday because he was meeting with a new therapist, he told Isaac that was why.

 

Isaac (3:44): are you sure? the mini golf place might go out of business by tomorrow

Stiles (3:45): ??? Yes obvi I’m sure you can’t cancel a therapy appointment less than 24 hours beforehand they charge you the full monty without insurance. $225 is a lot of mac and cheese

Isaac (3:52): you pay that much to talk to someone?

Stiles (3:56): My insurance does.

Isaac (4:01): i would pay that much NOT to talk to a therapist

Stiles (4:01): well buckaroo you can do that for FREE but i’m rolling up on Thomas Cho with my $25 copay in hand

 

He told himself that Isaac had never seen a therapist and was from a factory town and probably just didn’t get it. He froze up whenever Stiles mentioned therapy or his psychiatrist, and the first time he saw Stile’s orange pill bottles while going for lube he completely locked up, then brushed them aside and didn’t say a word.

 

Which—Stiles didn’t exactly want a relationship that was all about him being crazy anyway. He had that with Malia, and any therapist would say that they were codependent and unhealthy, in part because their relationship started in a mental hospital. Caitlin pretended to understand, she made jokes to end during one the one episode Stiles had around her, and it made him wish he never told her in the first place.

 

He couldn’t see himself saying, “Hey I have a psychotic disorder,” to Isaac any time soon, but he didn’t want to. They’d only been dating for a few weeks, even if the fact that they spent all their overlapping waking hours together made it seem longer. So did the intensity of their connection.

 

The first time they slept together was a four in the afternoon. They talked about it beforehand. They wanted time before Isaac vanished off to work.

 

“I haven’t slept with guys that much,” Stiles said, sitting on his bed fully clothed. Isaac toed off his shoes and sat next to him, long skinny legs stretched out over the bed.

 

“I’ve slept with guys very much,” he said. “If you haven’t before—“

 

“I have!” Stiles said, “It just—it was like one night stands? And we didn’t talk that much before, we, just like, prepped and did it.”

 

“In my experience,” Isaac said, “It’s better when we talk about it beforehand.”

 

“Oh wait, stand back,” Stiles said, “Isaac Lahey is advocating more talking?”

 

“Guess is shows how important it is?” Isaac said, “Like, do you…usually top?”

 

“Do you want me to top?” Stiles asked, not feeling particularly surprised.

 

“Do you usually?”

 

“Sometimes,” Stiles said, racking his brains trying to come up with a tally, “sometimes not?”

 

“But you usually sleep with girls, so do you like topping more?” Isaac asked, keeping it matter a fact.

 

Stiles laughed. That had to be offensive, if it wasn’t obvious that Isaac was fishing. “Isaac, would you like me to top you?”

 

“No I just mean,” Isaac blushed, the flush spreading down to his chest. “Do you want me to top you?”

 

“I mean,” Stiles sat forward and straddled him, leaning over with his hands on either side of Isaacs’s shoulder on the headboard. Isaac tried to bite back a grin. “I would rather top, unless you would.”

 

Isaac leaned forward and kissed Stiles. When he pulled away he was still blushing. “I don’t want to top.”

 

“Then I will,” Stiles said.

 

Isaac was right. It was much better then they talked before.

 

* * *

 

 

 

A month passed quickly. Stiles’s apartment filled with furnishings and kitchenware, mostly picked out on trips Isaac and Stiles took together and without meaning to he started thinking of it was their place.

 

“Hey so,” Stiles said mega casually. They were at an independent bookstore half an hour from Lake Wood searching for a paper copy of the world record book. “What are you doing for fourth of July?

 

“Nothing really,” Isaac said from behind a stack of books. “I’m going to my dad’s house.”

 

“Oh,” Stiles said, “I was going to invite you to this party and with Scott’s girlfriend’s family. I mean, I don’t know if it’s the kind of thing I can invite people to, but I think it is and it would be way more fun if you come.”

 

Isaac came out from behind the stack with the world record book in his hand. “Okay, world’s biggest pizza is what we’re trying to find? We could find this on the internet.”

 

“Don’t trust it,” Stiles said, taking the book out of his hands. “But seriously, do you want to come? Would you dad be totally sad if you ditched him?”

 

“He would be pathetically sad,” Isaac said, “Since it’s on a Saturday this is the first time in years I can actually stay at the party without going to work.”

 

It being on a Saturday also meant that Isaac could come over and they could totally fuck, but Stiles got that this was a family thing that mattered, and he could respect that.

 

“I guess we’ll have to have a miserable time at our separate parties then,” Stiles said.

 

“Yeah, I guess we will.”

  

* * *

 

 

Allison’s father was rich.

 

No one had to tell him that Allison came from money. She showed up once a week with canvas sacks filled with butcher paper wrapped meat, whole vegetables and reusable zip up bags full of spices. She had perfect definitely-had-braces teeth and once referenced spending every summer growing up in her family’s flat in France. Total rich kid, but good on her that she seemed to be as broke as the rest of them now.

 

Her father lived in Briarwood, like Isaac but on the absolute opposite end of town. As Allison got closer Stiles could see Lake Michigan clearly down the streets lined with high end apartments. She turned into a small parking lot to the side of a white stone midrise with units that probably cost a million dollars each.

 

Not that Stiles was intimidated.

 

“Your dad knows I’m coming right?” he said, leaning forward getting his face in the front seat so she definitely heard him. Scott pushed him back.

 

“Yes, he knows. He’s happy I have new friends,” Allison said.

 

They headed into the building got into went up a distinctly European elevator. Stiles half wished he’d stayed home. Being at a party where he only knew two people and those two people just wanted to suck face all the time was never his idea of a good time. If it was an actual party, yeah it would be fine but this was like, a family party and the only person he wanted to suck face with wouldn’t be there.

 

“So who is going to be at this rager? Any grandmas?” Stiles asked.

 

“Dude relax,” Scott said, “It’ll be fun.”

 

“I will be fun,” Allison said, “It’s just us and some friends of the family.”

 

The apartment itself was tasteful and sparsely decorated. Allison led them to a living/dining room in the back where a group of people about their age concentrated around a table loaded with food. Allison directed him to put the pathetic cupcakes he picked up on an empty spot. Next to it was what had to be a four pan chocolate cake with gold dust on the icing.

 

“Stiles,” a voice said, he looked up and found Lydia, Allison’s friend who he’d met once, “What a nice surprise to see you.”

 

Lydia was gorgeous. She was wearing a lacy dress with a unzipped maroon hoodie, and her hair was long and fucking like something out of a magazine. Sometimes Stiles creeped on her Instagram just because he couldn’t get over that someone who looked like that existed on this planet. He smiled stupidly at her. “Yeah, I hear this is the party of the century.”

 

“It actually is, in a way,” she said, “I look forward to it.”

 

“Where’s your girlfriend?”

 

Lydia rolled her eyes. “Cora’s off ‘taking a walk’ with Allison’s pothead brother. Mind you it’s five in the afternoon but whatever. I can’t control her.”

 

Stiles went to college long enough to know that taking a walk probably meant smoking up or getting booze, and since they were all old enough to buy booze without euphemisms it was probably the former.

 

Allison appeared with a bearded guy who was the epitome of a silver fox. He was wearing a grey t-shirt with the sleeves rolled up and a apron that somehow made him hotter. How was everyone in Allison’s life impossibly hot, even her dad?

 

“Dad,” he heard her say, “this is Scott’s roommate Stiles.”

 

Stiles held out his hand, because he automatically knew that was the right thing to do. Allison’s father put down the salad bowl in his hand and accepted it. “Nice to meet you man.”

 

“Stiles?” was all Allison’s father said in reply, “Is that your given name?”

 

“Ah, no,” Stiles hedged, “My real name is aggressively Polish.”

 

“I know some Polish,” Allison’s father said, not breaking eye contact.

 

Fuck. “It’s ah, Mieczyslaw.” He emphasized each turn of the vowel making a point of how difficult and impossible it was to use in America.

 

“Mieczyslaw,” Allison’s father said back perfectly, even down to the slightest nuances of the accent.

 

Stiles laughed nervously. “Yep that’s it. Nicely done, you should get on the first plane to Krakow.”

 

“It’s a good name,” Allison’s father said, “But you would prefer Stiles?”

 

Holy shit. “Yeah, if you don’t mind.”

 

Allison prodded her father. “Dad, you haven’t said hi to Scott yet.” To Stiles she handed an empty water pitcher and asked him to fill it up before practically pushing her father into the living room.

 

No one was in the kitchen, which was bananas because it was huge and had even more food piled on the giant island. The refrigerator was the fancy kind with a water spout in it and Stiles stood their waiting for it to fill, scanning the photos held onto the fridge face my magnets.

 

Most of the photos were landscapes from what looked like Europe or American deserts. When his eyes found one with people in it they nearly fell out.

For a second he thought he was a hallucinating. He’d never had a complex visual hallucination but his brain was all full of surprises. Held on the fridge with a magnet was a photo of Allison and _Isaac_ on what looked like Allison’s graduation day. They were both grinning at the person with the camera, and Isaac’s arm was casually slung around Allison and he was _in a photo with Allison._

Was he so desperate to hang out with Isaac that his brain made him up wherever he went?

 

On the other side of the apartment the door opened and people walked in and someone— _Isaac_ —said, “Did someone take out my rolls?”

 

Holy shit this was either the start of a new breakdown or the world’s weirdest coincidence.

 

Stiles was torn between going towards the voice or out the balcony window and diving into Lake Michigan when the choice was made for him. Isaac came through a back entrance to the kitchen and stopped short when he saw Stiles.

 

Water ran over the sides of the pitcher that Stiles was still holding to the fridge spout and he frantically pulled away and wiped the wet edge of the pitcher with his shirt.

 

“Stiles?” Isaac said, “What are you doing here?”

 

What the fuck what the fuck? “I was invited—what are you doing here?”

 

“Oh. Okay.” He looked confused, but not totally alarmed by this turn of events. “This is my dad’s party. No wait, why are you here? Did I invite you?”

 

“ _You’re_ Allison’s pothead brother?”

 

“I guess?” Isaac said. “Seriously, did I invite you?”

 

“No, Allison did. Wait why didn’t you invite me?”

 

“You know Allison?”

 

Stiles had a feeling this conversation would have gone a lot smoother if Isaac wasn’t high. Also if it wasn’t as confusing as possible. Scott showed up to take the pitcher and looked between them. “Oh great! Have you guys met each other yet? This is Allison’s brother.”

 

“We’ve met each other,” Isaac said, not looking away from Stiles. Like it was a totally normal conversation.

 

“Yeah, we super have met each other,” Stiles said, waving for attention. “This is Isaac, this is the guy I’ve been seeing.”

 

He said it without really realizing that he was breaking the secret that he’d been keeping. The need to reveal the completely wild situation they were in overrode his desire to keep Isaac a secret. Because he never wanted to keep him a secret really, he just didn’t want to ruin what was happening with other people’s opinions. But it was going to come out now, so damn if Stiles wasn’t going to have some say in how it happened.

 

“You’ve been seeing a guy and you didn’t tell me?” Scott said.

 

“Wait, this is your Scott? The same Scott? You didn’t tell him about me?” Isaac said, once again sounding more amused that alarmed by anything that was happening.

 

Stiles practically stomped his feet. His subterfuge was beyond not the point right now. “Can we focus on the fact that it was Allison’s brother I was seeing and it took us three months to figure it out.”

 

“We’ve only been seeing each other a month,” Isaac corrected dimly.

 

“What the fuck does that mean?”

 

From the other room Allison’s father called out, “Is everything all right in there?”

 

Allison showed up then. “Isaac! Have you met Stiles?”

 

“Yes!” Stiles didn’t yell. “Isaac has met Stiles. Isaac met Stiles in March. We were train buddies and now we’re buddies buddies. Like for real buddies buddies. Except none of us figured this out.”

 

“It’s kind of cool,” Isaac added.

 

It occurred to Stiles that Isaac must not have told his family about him either. Stiles beyond an uncommon name, and if he said his name to Allison then she would figure it out. But he didn’t seem bothered than it was coming out, he was smirking and looking between everyone in the room like it was a game.

 

Then other people are in the room. Two black guys with beers. A short blonde girl and Lydia’s girlfriend—both of whom smelled like pot, then Allison’s father and Allison started relaying the story.

 

It was mortifying.

 

“Wait,” her father—Isaac’s father?—said. “Stiles has known both of your for three months and neither of you told him enough for him to realize you’re in same family?”

 

He sounds almost pleased about it. Stiles was a second away from freaking out. How could he have missed something so huge? Everyone was chattering and laughing, Scott was saying something in his ear that was probably meant to be reassuring but it wasn’t working.

 

Finally—finally, Isaac seemed to realize what was happening and he signaled to Stiles to hold on. He grabbed a beer out of the fridge along with a plate of pinwheel cookies.

 

“We’re going to hang out in my room and figure this out,” he announced, “Don’t worry Chris, high school rules I’ll leave the door open.”

 

“But this is the most exciting thing that’s happened at this party in years!” the blond girl objected.

 

Isaac handed Stiles the plate of pinwheel cookies and took his other hand. “We’ll update you later.” Then he pulled Stiles out of the kitchen and fucking rescued him.

 

Once they got in Isaac’s room all Stiles could say was “What the fuck?”

 

Stiles still hadn’t been to Isaac’s house, but he knew that he lived with his friends Boyd and Erica and not with his dad. He didn’t even know that his dad lived in the same town. The room had all the marking of an adult child. The made double bed, packed boxes stacked in a corner and dust collecting on a meticulously organized bookshelf lined with thick history books.

 

Isaac put the plate of pinwheel cookies on a clear spot on the desk and sat on the bed. Stiles gingerly sat next to him.

 

“So that was kind of funny out there,” Stiles started.

 

“Yeah,” Isaac said, adding nothing to the conversation.

 

“Yeah, I didn’t even really know enough about you to, you know, guess who you secret siblings where but I didn’t think it would be Allison.”

 

“Yeah. Yeah I’ve kind of been out of touch with Allison otherwise I might have figured it out.”

 

“Or, you know, if either of us had said her name at any given point.”

 

“Poor Allison.”

 

Stiles laughed despite himself, “Yes, poor Allison.” He carefully opened the beer Isaac handed him—fancy shit he would never buy himself but always wanted to—and Isaac used the gap in conversation to grab six of the pinwheels off the plate and cram two in his mouth.

 

“So,” Isaac said, “Those times you said that your roommates girlfriend was this scary woman who wanted you out?”

 

“That was your sister,” Stiles said. Isaac grimaced, “Or not sister? I’m already very confused on that front.”

 

“No,” Isaac sighed, “She is my sister. It’s just kind of complicated.”

 

“Okay. Yeah, can I ask about that? Because in the last twenty seconds of having this information I’ve done a big scroll through of everything you two have told me about yourselves and it doesn’t add up. You grew up in Indiana, and Allison once told me that she’s lived in twelve states. Who’s lying?”

 

Isaac chewed laboriously on the food in his mouth then swallowed. “Um…neither of us. Chris adopted me.”

 

“Wait is that why you’re being weird about the brother sister thing? Because just because you’re adopted—“

 

“It’s not that. I mean—“ Isaac leaned over and reached for one of the pinwheels. “That is it sort of, I wasn’t adopted until I was seventeen. But…” Isaac hesitated long enough that Stiles wondered if he was just too high for this and couldn’t do the conversation, then he finally said, “…we also used to date.”

 

Oh.

 

Wait what?

 

“You used to date Allison?”

 

“We broke up six months before I was adopted. Not that weird” Isaac said, “Do you want one of these, they’re really good.” He offered Stiles the plate of cookies.

 

Actually, this conversation was probably going much easier because one of them was high. “I thought you were gay? Like say no to biphobia and I guess you never told me that you were gay ”

 

Isaac groaned and fell back on the bed. “You’re asking a lot of questions.”

 

“This is a situation that merits a lot of questions!” Stiles replied. “Here look, I’m not adopted, I’m an only child, I’m bi-af and my mom is dead. Your turn.”

 

Isaac stayed lying down but groped his hand out, reaching toward Stiles. After a minute Stiles realized what he wanted and reached out to hold his hand. He lay back on the bed too.

 

“I’m adopted, I had a brother before but he died when I was twelve, and I have Allison now. I’m…gay? But not because I really did love Allison. My mom is dead too, so is my other father. I’m sorry yours is too.”

 

“Way to one up me man,” Stiles joked. Jesus there were three dead people in that statement. “I’m sorry about your family. Was it—“

 

“Complicated,” Isaac cut in, his voice as firm as it could be when he laying in his bed with his eyes closed. “I didn’t not tell you about my family. This family. I just didn’t realize you were practically living with one of them.”

 

“I didn’t not tell you about Allison either,” Stiles said. He kept his hand linked with Isaac’s, but sat up. “So this is your room?”

 

Isaac did not sit up, but pulled himself up and leaned on his elbow. “Yeah, I lived here two and a half years.”

 

“So the timeline…” Stiles trailed off.

 

“I moved here in January when I was seventeen, Allison and I broke up that May, and I was adopted the following January,” Isaac rattled off, like he had said this a thousand times before. “No overlap. We were never dating when I legally related to her.”

 

“Not even like, later when you were like sitting in a dimly lit room and you caught her eye and—“

 

Isaac let go of his hand to smack him on the arm. “Dude, shut up. No. Are you going to be weird about this?”

 

“I don’t know,” Stiles said waving his hands, “It’s a lot to process.”

 

“If you want to be with me you can’t be weird about it because it’s not going away.”

 

It was probably the most definitive thing Isaac had said to him that wasn’t laced in sarcasm. He was totally serious, and Stiles realized this was something he couldn’t joke around about. Even if it was rife with jokes. Because come on, how was he supposed to process all this information? Up until now Isaac had been this picky sarcastic stranger on a train who hated his job, was from “the world’s stupidest town” in Indiana, thought superman was a terrible superhero, and really liked Stiles.

 

Stiles never really asked him about his family, or even his roommates and he never noticed that Isaac didn’t offer it up. Did he worry that Stiles would react this way? Was he totally fucking up?

 

“Okay,” Stiles said, “This is your family and I’m cool with it. Super cool with it in fact because Allison is actually cool as hell and your dad can say my real name correctly.”

 

“What’s your real name?”

 

“Now who is asking a lot of questions?”

 

“It’s my turn,” Isaac said, waiting patiently.

 

Stiles sighed. Here goes, for the second time in ten minutes, “Mieczyslaw.”

 

“Meeshlaw,” Isaac said back immediately, butchering it completely.

 

“Mieczyslaw,” Stiles repeated.

 

“Meechislav” Isaac tried again.

 

“You got it in two,” Stiles said.

 

“Really?”

 

“No. No one can say it right, not even my dad. Everyone calls me Stiles.”

 

“I’ve never had a nickname. My name doesn’t really lend itself to it.”

 

“Zac?” Stile suggested.

 

“No, shut up that’s terrible.”

 

There was some tension a minute ago, but now they were back to their usual rhythm and Stiles sank into it with relief. He couldn’t handle not having Isaac around, it would be total garbage if this weird coincidence and Stiles’s momentary confusion led to them not talking anymore. Stiles didn’t have a lot going on, his apartment kind of sucked and his job really sucked and his life didn’t have the heroes quest he’d expected to have by this point. But he had Isaac. And that was good.

 

“Do we go back out to the party?” Stiles asked. He wouldn’t have a problem staying in Isaac’s room the entire time. He thought of his room back home with the snowboarder decal above the bed, and how much more mature this one was. They could stay in here all night talking and reading out of the excessive collection of Civil War history books on the shelf.

 

“We probably should,” Isaac said, “Erica is going to be freaking out about this.”

 

“Erica is the blonde girl?” Stiles asked. Isaac reached for another cookie and nodded. “And the black guys?”

 

“The black guys?” Isaac said back sarcastically.

 

“You know what I mean! There were two men in this party who I do not know who were also black!”

 

“Jesus, just say the two guys I don’t know,” Isaac said, not sounding totally serious. “The one who looks like he’s about to explode from all the muscles is Boyd, my roommate. The other guy is Bennett, Chris’s ‘favorite employee’ aka his best American friend.”

 

“And Chris is your dad?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“But you don’t call him dad.”

 

“Adopted at seventeen,” Isaac reminded him. “It just…feels weird to even think about doing that. Anyway,” he said brushing the conversation off, “yeah, Boyd and Erica know about us. They’re the people I see every day, of course the do. I just didn’t tell Allison and Chris,” he sat all the way up, “because I got out of a really serious relationship, and they’d get all protective if they knew. Like, they’re about to get really protective right now when we go out there.”

 

“Oh they are?” Stiles asked.

 

“Yeah, Chris can get really intense. He’ll like you eventually, but right now he’s going to be really—what’s the word for being intimidating and polite at the same time?”

 

“Terrifying,” Stiles said, “I feel like I should explain why I didn’t tell Scott about you.” he said.

 

Isaac fell back on his elbows. “You don’t have to. I know I’m not the prize hog.”

 

“That’s not it at all,” Stiles said, his voice rising. “You’re _the_ prize hog. I love being with you. I just—Scott is protective too. He gets all worried about me, and I didn’t want anyone being worried about our relationship.”

 

“Oh, our relationship?” Isaac said, grinning.

 

“Oh yeah,” Stiles said, “I’d say we’re in a pretty serious relationship.”

 

Isaac smiled, “I would too.”

 

So much information, Stiles felt like his head was going to explode and also and also maybe kiss him forever. The last one at least he could do. He leaned down and kissed him, and Isaac sat up into the kiss, putting his hand on the back of Stiles’s head. They went on for a minute before Stiles remembered that Isaac had left the door open, and pulled away.

 

“Back to the party we go?” he suggested, suddenly super conscious of how quiet it was outside the room.

 

“Everyone is going to be freaking out,” Isaac said.

 

“We’re basically the princesses of this party,” Stiles agreed, “get ready to be a superstar.”

 

Isaac lifted their hands where they were linked and kissed Stiles’s knuckles. “Just stay by me, we can handle it.”

 

Stiles kissed him quick and stood up, pulling Isaac with him by their linked hands. “C’mon. I can’t wait for your dad to gently threaten me.”

 

 


	12. Lag Time

Times Isaac was High When He Shouldn’t Have Been

 

  * The ACTs
  * Allison’s high school graduation
  * Allison’s college graduation
  * At work whenever he was training someone
  * At Erica’s cousin’s quince
  * While taking his Art History final
  * While meeting with his college advisor
  * At the dentist
  * At Chris’s Fourth of July party when Stiles was there too and meeting everyone he knows



 

For a little while he was fine.

 

Chris has thrown a 4th of July party every year since Allison came back from her freshman year of college. All the friends of the Argent/Lahey family were invited—which was admittedly a small group. The Hales came when they were in the country, and Erica and Boyd came. Sometimes some of Erica’s family came along. The party started with a potluck dinner, which was mostly dishes that Chris had been making and freezing for weeks. Then they walked to the beach and watched the fireworks and went their separate ways.

 

Most of the time Isaac didn’t have secret boyfriends who showed up and revealed themselves to be best friends with Allison’s boyfriend.

 

It was fine though.

 

It was mostly funny.

 

They came out of his room and Erica was hovering outside, grinning like a lunatic. She was wearing a spraypaint t-shirt with fireworks over her swimsuit, and torn jeans, looking all of sixteen. She grabbed Stiles’s hand and dragged him down the hall, pulling Isaac with him where he was holding Stiles’s other hand.

 

“What’s happening?” Stiles laughed.

 

“Come on,” she said, “Isaac has been hiding you for long enough. You and I are essentially the best of friends from all our texting dates, but no one else knows you.”

 

In the living room everyone else was talking to each other like normal, and the weird paranoia Isaac had that everyone was standing outside his bedroom door fizzled out.

 

Chris came up and shook Stiles’s hand, “We should meet again. Now that I know you’re dating my son.”

 

Stiles laughed, which was less cool than it could have been, and shook Chris’s hand. He let go of Isaac’s hand to do it, looking over at Isaac while he did it. Isaac knew that he should be worried about this moment, but the warm high enveloped him and all he could think was, _Chris probably won’t threaten to shoot him, so that’s good._

And Chris didn’t. He looked Stiles in the eye and said, “You knew both of my children for three months and didn’t figure out that they were related during that entire time.”

 

“Weird right?” Stiles said, “They’re pretty private people, I guess.”

 

“Are you suggesting there is something wrong with my children?” Chris asked.

 

Isaac leaned past Stiles and grabbed a roll. This was much better than threatening to shoot Stiles. One month of dating was too soon for Isaac to bring Stiles up at Saturday dinners, so Chris didn’t know about him. He probably wouldn’t bring him around or talk about him for another few weeks, but he was going to do it eventually. Chris never fully liked Danny, even though Danny was nothing but polite and competent. God knows what he would think of Stiles.

 

So far it was going well.

 

Stiles laughed nervously. “No, I’m a big fan of both of them. Allison especially.”

 

“Not Isaac?” Chris said.

 

“No, especially Isaac. Obviously.”

 

Chris frowned. “What exactly do you do Stiles?”

 

“I do HR data entry at Slate,” Stiles said. “It’s boring but it pays the bills. I pay my own bills, I’m financially independent and I—I have my own place on the North side and I’m saving up for a car. So. What do you do?”

 

Isaac laughed. Chris blinked at Stiles. Stiles waited for a reply.

 

“I’m a federally licensed arms dealer and security consultant.”

 

Stiles laughed hysterically. “No seriously?”

 

“Do I look like I’m joking?” Chris asked.

 

Isaac looped his arm around Stiles’s shoulders, “It’s not as scary as it sounds. He just sells guns.”

 

“That’s…very chill,” Stiles said.

 

Chris smiled, baring his teeth like a wolf. “Most of my work is security consulting these days. It comes naturally, I am very skilled at protecting the things I value most. Like my children.”

 

Stiles nodded. “I get you totally. I promise.”

 

“Do you?” Chris asked.

 

“I don’t like hurting people,” Stiles said, sounding more serious than Isaac had ever heard him, “I actually try to keep the people I care about from being hurt. So believe me. I get you.”

 

Chris gave a small smile and nodded. “Enjoy the party Stiles.” He reached out and touched Isaac’s shoulder then walked away to the kitchen.

 

“Did that go well?” Stiles asked, as Isaac dragged him to dining room. They found a seat next to Bennett, who posed the least risk by far of everyone at the party.

 

“I picked out this table,” he told Stiles.

 

“You did?”

 

“Yeah, like eight years ago.”

 

“Very cool.”

 

There were M&M’s in a bowl—Boyd and Erica’s contribution—and Isaac tooks a handful and handed them to Stiles, then took a handful for himself. “That went great, he likes you,” Isaac let him know.

 

“Does he? It didn’t feel that way,” Stiles said.

 

“I know,” Isaac said, “That’s how it starts.”

 

Bennett leaned over. “It took a year for Chris to act like he liked me,” he said, “and now I’m his favorite employee.”

 

“Slash best friend,” Isaac added.

 

Stiles nodded, “Right, I heard about that. You’re in the security slash guns business too?”

 

Bennett nodded. “I do sales for Argent Arms. It’s not exactly party talk, but I like it. I heard you’re from California?”

 

Stiles smiled. Isaac realized he was probably going to have some version of this conversation ten times tonight. Shit. Stiles’d just come here as a random tagalong and now he was the main focus on the party. Isaac was glad everyone already knew his shit, or he’d be going through this too. 

 

Allison cornered him in the kitchen while Stiles was in the bathroom.

 

“You’re dating Stiles?” she asked.

 

“Yeah,” Isaac said.

 

“How high are you?” she asked.

 

Isaac considered the question. He wasn’t that high, they’d shared a blunt in the open air. It probably wouldn’t last that much longer. He was pretty sure the only reason anyone knew he was high was that he, Erica, and Cora got high at every fourth of July party. They once got way too high and “disappointed Chris” so now they were more careful. It wasn’t affecting him that much.

 

“Not very,” he said.

 

“Okay well,” she said, “I’m not going to really try to talk to you about this until you’re not.”

 

“That’s responsible of you,” he teased.

 

“You know me,” she said. “But we will talk about this.”

 

“You don’t like Stiles?”

 

“No I love Stiles,” she said.

 

It struck him as funny that Allison said that so easily. She loved Stiles. Did Isaac love Stiles? Was he even allowed to think about loving Stiles? Why was Allison allowed to say he loved Stiles like it was no big deal, and he felt like a creep for even thinking about it?

 

“But we should still talk about it,” she continued. “It’s crazy right? I thought you dating Danny was weird, but Stiles is like Scott’s brother.”

 

“Oh no, are you mad?” Isaac asked, “Don’t be mad, I’m not trying to mess up your life.”

 

“I’m not mad,” Allison said, sounding surprised. “I like when our lives overlap. They don’t often enough.”

 

It struck Isaac as something he should probably pursue, a line of conversation Allison might want to continue, but Boyd showed up and shepparded him into the living room. Stiles was in their at the end of a tale that had the entire party gawking at him as he gesticulated wildly.

 

“—but then the police showed up and spoiler alert the police are _my dad_ so it got shut down real quick.”

 

Everyone laughed and Isaac tried to backtrack whether or not Stiles had told him this story already. He didn’t think he had, but it didn’t matter because once Stiles saw him his face lit up and he reached one hand out for Isaac. Isaac grinned like an idiot and took his hand, stepping close to him.

 

“Aren’t you adorable,” Erica cooed. “Seriously, why haven’t you brought Stiles around yet?”

 

Isaac ignored her. “We’re going to the beach soon,” he told Stiles.

 

Stiles smiled. “Nice. Love me some beach. Love me some fireworks.”

 

Isaac smiled back. 

 

* * *

 

 

When the first firework when off it hit him.

 

They always timed it wrong.

 

They always got high too early with plans for making the fireworks better, but it wore off once the fireworks were actually happening.

 

Which meant the reality of what was happening hit Isaac while the sky was exploding.

 

Stiles had just met everyone he knew and he was high while it happened.

 

He looked around himself. They were sitting on a clear patch of grass a few yards from the beach. Allison was sitting to his right, and Stiles was to his left. They were holding hands, and Isaac realized that they had been for most of the night. Most of the night when Stiles found out that he was adopted, and his family was dead and his dad didn’t threaten to shoot him but totally totally judged him for not figuring out about them being related and Erica definitely flirted with him and Boyd was boring as hell and he saw his bedroom he saw his bedroom and holy shit Stiles just saw his entire life and he was _high the whole time._

Stiles squeezed his hand and looked over. “Neato, right? I’ve never seen fireworks like this,” he yelled over the sound of the explosions.

 

The sky was exploding.

 

What did Stiles think of him now? He’d never revealed his life to anyone this way, it was always slow and methodical like mowing a prairie field line by line. Danny was part of his life for years before they got together. All the others never got anywhere near his life.

 

And Stiles just met everyone he loved at the same time.

 

Why did Allison need to talk to him? Was there something wrong? Did she think he wasn’t good enough for Stiles? He already knew that. If Allison told him that to his face he might die.

 

Stiles leaned over and nudged him with his shoulder, “Are you alright?” he asked.

 

Isaac was not alright.

 

The explosions petered out, and the thousands of people on the beach and lawn burst into applause. Stiles let go of his hand to clap, and Isaac belatedly realized he should join them.

 

“That was amazing!” Stiles yelled over the crowd. He grabbed Isaac’s hand again, which was at least one sign that he didn’t totally fucking hate Isaac now. “I swear to god! I guess you can do better ones over the water because I’ve only ever seen land locked fireworks and they are totally lame in comparison.”

 

Isaac got up and grabbed the blanket they were sitting on. He threw it over his shoulder. Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.

 

“Now what?” Stiles asked. Isaac led them to follow the party crowd back to Chris’s building three blocks away.

 

“Um,” Isaac said, “Now the party is over. Everyone just goes to their cars, or gets their stuff from Chris’s place. I was going to sleep over.”

 

Stiles laughed easily. “I’m assuming I’m not invited for that.”

 

Shit. “I mean, no but—“

 

“Dude, I am totally so kidding. We’re not married. I’m not invited to sleep over at your dad’s house. It’s like, a given.”

 

“Okay,” Isaac said.

 

Did anyone freak Stiles out? Did Chris threaten to shoot Stiles while he wasn’t looking? Did he think Isaac was a total weirdo and liar for not telling him about Allison?

 

Why did Allison want to talk to him?

 

Stiles was in a fantastic mood, he whooped at a group of strangers and hopped twice while still holding Isaac’s hand. The walked with the group down the sidewalk back to Chris’s apartment, just a few blocks from the shoreline.

 

“Easily, top three fourth of July’s ever. I’m so sorry, but it is _not_ the best one ever because there was one time Scott and took all the fireworks that dad had confiscated and set them off. It was wild. It was great. But this was great too.”

 

Isaac didn’t respond. Stiles elbows him again. “You good?”

 

“Yeah,” Isaac finally said, “Did you—do you still want to hang out tomorrow?”

 

“Totally,” Stiles said easily.

 

Okay so Chris probably didn’t threaten to shoot him.

 

* * *

 

 

Even though it was going to fuck everything up, Isaac slept through the night and woke up in his bed at Chris’s apartment and was hit with dread. He didn’t know why initially, and it was not so weird because he woke up feeling a weight on his chest kind of a lot.

 

He stared at the ceiling with the fancy crown molding and waited for some explanation for his stupid feelings to hit.

 

Stiles met everyone and he was high while it happened.

 

Allison wanted to talk to him about Stiles.

 

To tell him that he’s not good enough for Stiles.

 

Obviously.

 

He wasn’t surprised to find Allison in the kitchen, making eggs. She barely looked at him, then added a few eggs to the scrambled egg mixture she was working on.

 

“Hey,” he says.

 

“You sleep?” she asked, because that was the first question anyone in his family ever asked him.

 

“Yep,” he said, “you?”

 

“I did,” she said, “I should drink more often, I sleep like the dead when I do. Dad is getting a book out of the storage unit, but if you want—”

 

“What did you want to talk to me about?”

 

Allison looked up from the scrambled eggs and blinks. “Pardon?”

 

“About Stiles. You said you wanted to talk to me about me and Stiles, but you were waiting until I wasn’t high. I’m not. We can talk now.”

 

“We just woke up.” Does that mean it’s serious? Serious enough that he’d have to be more awake for it? That’s bad. He forced himself to sit down at the island and act casual, and like he wasn’t about to hear his relationship doomed. Allison turned down the heat on the pan and turns around. “Alright fine,” she said, “Lets start with the fact that you don’t talk to me enough.”

 

That wasn’t what he was expecting. “I talk to you plenty.”

 

“I send you a photo of a dog basically every day and you almost never respond,” she said matter a fact. “You don’t call me, you don’t text me. I basically lived with your boyfriend and I didn’t even know it.”

 

“He wasn’t my boyfriend when he lived with Scott,” Isaac hedged, “And you don’t call or text me either.”

 

“You started it,” she said without any irony. “Is this about Scott?”

 

God. They had to be the only people in the world who went from a couple to exes to siblings in less than a year. It was weird for fucking sure. He hadn’t had any feelings for her since he was a teenagers, not really since they started living together and their relationship transitioned out of romance in a matter of months. He sometimes wondered if he really was gay, and if his feelings for Allison back then were more about mutual grief and finding a kindred spirit than actual sexuality. It was better, really.

 

“No,” he said, “not that I actually know anything about Scott. You want to talk about not talking, you basically hid him from Chris as me for over six months. That’s fucking dramatic.”

 

Allison took a deep breath. “That’s because you and Dad act extremely weird around any guy I date. I actually care about Scott, and I didn’t need dad threatening to kill him before he really got to know me.”

 

“Dad threatened to kill me the day we met and I stuck around,” Isaac offered, “It went well last night, didn’t it?”

 

Allison shrugged, “It did. We had dinner already. I wish you had spent more time with him last night,” she admitted.

 

“I was kind of preoccupied,” Isaac said, “I didn’t realize Stiles would be here.”

 

Allison nodded, “Yeah about that.”

 

Fuck. This was it.

 

Allison fiddled with the eggs but kept herself angled towards him. She made intent eye contact when she asked, “Why didn’t you tell Stiles anything about yourself?”

 

Isaac blinked. That wasn’t what he was expecting. “I told him a lot about me.”

 

“You didn’t tell him who I was. You didn’t tell him about Dad. You didn’t invite him to the Fourth of July party. I’m assuming you didn’t tell him why you were riding the train.”

 

“I did,” Isaac defended himself, even though he hadn’t really. He told Stiles that his license was suspended, and that was it. He didn’t tell him about the night he was arrested, or nearly getting fired after spending the night in jail or any of that. But he didn’t have to. It wasn’t serious with Stiles. “And I told him I was from Indiana, so,” he said, knowing that it was a trump card. Allison knew that ever bringing up Indiana was a rarity.

 

She rewarded him by raising her eyebrows. “Okay, so it was just us that you kept a secret?”

 

Isaac shrugged, “I don’t know Allison, do you lead with the fact that your dad adopted your ex-boyfriend? Did you tell Scott about me?”

 

“I didn’t lead with it, but I did tell him,” Allison said, “You’re an important part of my life, I wouldn’t hide you from anyone.”

 

Which is ridiculous, because she literally did for six months. Isaac kindly didn’t call her out of in because she was making him breakfast. “Stiles and me have only been going out for a month,” he said, “It’s not the same thing. Just say it then, okay? Just say that you know him and you like him and I’m not good enough for him. Everyone’s already thinking it.”

 

Allison’s jaw dropped and she abandoned the eggs to come sit next to him. “Isaac, no one thinks that.”

 

“Sure they do,” he said, “Stiles is smarter than me, and he’s funny, and he’s probably never been in jail and he doesn’t have any business hanging out with the likes of me.”

 

“Dude,” Allison said, “You can’t—actually I do believe that you believe that but it is a _terrible_ thing to say, even about yourself.”

 

“The eggs,” Isaac said, “They’re going to burn.”  


“I could give a shit about the eggs,” she said, “You can’t believe that about yourself. You’re not allowed.”

 

“The _eggs,”_ Isaac repeated. He got up and gave the eggs a good stir before turning them onto the waiting plate. Allison didn’t get up, and just looked at him when he handed her a plate and a fork.

 

“You’re going to have to deal with this someday,” she said.

 

“Not today,” he said. “And not when Chris could walk in and get all excited talking about my self esteem.”

 

Just on cue the hall door opened and Chris walked in with a book in hand.

 

“Well,” he said, “This is a nice way to start the morning.” Isaac handed him a plate of eggs and Chris took a seat at the island.

 

“Now,” he said, “Have we discussed Stiles yet?”

 

Seriously, fuck this morning.

 

* * *

 

 

He texted with Stiles, but didn’t see him until Monday evening. He had to help clean up from the party, then he had to drive Erica a few places, and by the time he was done Stiles was with Scott for the night. But as usual, they planned on Isaac picking Stiles up from the Briarwood stop. They didn’t discuss specific plans, and as Isaac pulled into the train station parking lot he was more than convinced that when Stiles got off the train, he would blanch and run in the other direction.

 

Stiles didn’t. He waved from the platform and practically broke his neck running down the stairs. Isaac nearly stumbled back when Stiles ran into him and planted a kiss on him like they haven’t seen each other in years.

 

“Boy did I miss you. My Sunday was empty without you.”

 

“I missed you too,” Isaac said, unable to keep the pleasure out of his voice. “Did you still want to hang out today?”

 

Stiles glanced at the train car then back at Isaac. “Yeah. Of course I do. I had a shit day at work and all that got me through was knowing we’d get up to something afterwards. Wait, why? Do you not want to?”

 

“No!” Isaac said, “Of course I do.”

 

“Okay good,” Stiles said, “Because I always want to hang out with you. I thought you knew that.”

 

He didn’t, but it didn’t seem nice to say so right now. Right now he slung his arm around Stiles shoulder, and walked back to the car and listened to him list off all the things they could do with their evening.


	13. Hippo Hippo Hypocrite

(list to come)

 

 

The worst thing about being an adult was that nothing changed during the summer. Stiles still worked at Slate, Isaac still worked at Jeanne’s and it was just hotter. The humidity in Chicago was insane, and everyone blamed the lake but Stiles secretly thought it was some curse upon the entire city that makes the air so thick you could drink it.

 

“Pool,” he said one day when Isaac picked him up from the train station, “We have to go to the pool.”

 

It was 100 degrees and Stiles might die if he didn’t get his head underwater.

 

“Lake,” Isaac corrected, “I can swing by my Chris’ and borrow his beach tokens, and we can go to the beach near his place.”

 

“Beach tokens?”

 

“You have to pay to go to the beach.”

 

“That should be illegal,” Stiles said.

 

“I agree.”

 

They had to make three stops, one to Stiles’s place to pick up his suit and drop of his laptop, one to Isaac’s to pick up his swimsuit and sunscreen, and one to his dad’s. Isaac made him stay in the car for the latter two stops, which. Rude. It was not the first time they’d gone by Isaac’s house—a yellow brick one story number with a wild bush in the front and a cement duck on the walkway—that Stiles hadn’t been allowed inside.

 

When Isaac got back in the car, Stiles brought it up.

 

“Do you have some kind of monster inside there?” he asked.

 

“What?” Isaac played dumb, “I have a really aggressive cat.”

 

“I’ve dealt with worse than aggressive cats,” Stiles offered.

 

Isaac pulled out of the driveway and started driving east. “It’s a mess in there, it’s more my roommates house than mine. There’s no reason for you to come in.”

 

“I could see your room, we could even do it on your bed! Imagine, Isaac. That would be so much fun.”

 

Isaac shook his head. “Your place is better, trust me. We don’t have to go to mine.”

 

Stiles should have dropped it but he couldn’t, because that wasn’t what he was, “Dude, seriously are you like, ashamed of me? Do you not want your roommates or your dad to see me?”

 

Isaac blew through a stop sign. “What? No. Are you insane? Of course not. It’s just convenience, okay? If you go inside Erica or Chris will want to talk to you, then we’ll never get to the beach and we only have a limited amount of time. Seriously, it’s not you.”

 

Stiles heavily suspected there was more to it than that but he shuts up because they’re parking and the lake is in front of him.

 

The beach went on for miles, dotted with umbrellas and beach towels and lifeguard stands. The water was dark blue and sparkling as waves broke against the shore, and even from the parking lot, he could hear swimmers screaming happily in the waves.

 

He’s never lived somewhere with a beach. He’s been to them, plenty, on family vacations downstate or to cabins on lakes. But this lake, Lake Michigan, looked more like an ocean.

 

“Do you come here a lot?” he asked Isaac, accepting the pile of towels that Isaac pulled out of the trunk and handed him.

 

“Not so much anymore,” he said, “I did in high school.”

 

They found a clear spot by the water, and Stiles stripped off his shirt right away and bunched it up so he could lie on it. Isaac peeled off his shoes, but stayed sitting up, scanning the beach like he was looking for someone.

 

“I thought you wanted to swim,” Isaac said, poking him in the stomach.

 

“Are you going to come with me?” Stiles asked.

 

“Do you know how to swim?” Isaac asked.

 

“Duh,” Stiles said, “Swim classes at the Y every summer, baby. Why? Do you?”

 

Isaac nodded but didn’t offer up where he learned to swim, baby. He instead pulled off his black t-shirt and offered his hand to Stiles. He stood up and brought Stiles with him then gave him a shove.

 

“Race you to the shore.” He took off running, kicking sand onto Stiles as he went.

 

“Oh, no fucking fair!” Stiles yelled and ran after him.

 

The water was freezing. Not as cold as he expected but cold enough that Stiles yelled “Holy shit!” earning some displeased looks from parents around them. The lakebed was covered in rocks and Stiles quickly followed Isaac into a deeper area where he could float without practically cutting his feet all up on rocks.

 

Isaac was pink cheeked and his hair, normally held in perfect curls with what Stiles suspected must be a mousse, was flat against his forehead. Stiles knew his definitely-controlled-with-mouse hair must have been looking the same. Isaac reached out for him and pulled him against his body in the water, keeping them afloat with one rotating arm.

 

“You promise you know how to swim?” he asked.

 

“Totally, but I’m not opposed to you doing some rescue breathing,” Stiles said.

 

Isaac looked around at the families that were unsubtly moving away from them. He grinned ferally and kissed Stiles, grabbing the back of his head then with only “Ready?” as a warning, dunked them underwater.

 

Stiles shot to the surface, sputtering. “That was not okay! Ugh, I swear I got seaweed up my nose.”

 

“You’ll be fine,” Isaac said, kicking away from him, “You have to get used to lake water. Come on. Let’s ride the waves.”

 

They held hands and floated and small waves lifted them up and down no more than three feet at a time. As the sun set the families left, until it was just them and a group of teenagers on the other end of the beach. Stiles checked his waterproof watch and realized they only had a few hours to dry off and shower before Isaac had to go to work.

 

Stiles hated Jeanne’s more than he hated most things.

 

Luckily, Isaac’s dad had apparently given him a cooler full of sandwiches with cuts of leftover steak and horseradish, and an assortment of cut veggies. They kept their shirts off as they dried, and Stiles couldn’t help but use the opportunity to study Isaac.

 

Even when he spent the weekend, Isaac didn’t hang around shirtless. Even when they fucked before work, Isaac was quick to get dressed and throw Stiles’s own shirt at his face. He wrote it off as a quirk, one of the many _things_ about Isaac that could have been quirks, or could have been something more.

 

He wasn’t blind, he noticed the scars on Isaac’s body.

 

He had burns on his forearms that he proudly pointed out. Some recent. All from baking.

 

The others he didn’t seem proud of at all. The jagged line on his back, the thick white line on his calf. Stiles stopped once, when he encountered a perfectly circular one on Isaac’s chest, but Isaac just said, _“No,_ ” and kissed him forcefully, ending any line of questioning that Stiles could have started.

 

Stiles had scars too, fare from lacrosse or messing around with Scott with they were kids. But something about Isaac’s scars felt wrong.

 

Isaac sat with his elbow on his knee, watching the shoreline as he ate. Stiles ate too, but he couldn’t help bringing his gaze to the scar tissue on Isaac’s elbow. It was the first one he noticed, it curled like a question mark around the tip of his elbow and was pink and raised. It was clearly surgical.

 

Eventually, Isaac noticed him looking, or stopped pretending not to notice. “Are you going to ask?” he said.

 

“For your sandwich?” Stiles played dumb. “You seem pretty attached.”

 

“You know what I mean,” Isaac said, and Stiles didn’t miss that it was almost an invitation.

 

“What happened?” he asked.

 

“It happened when I was fourteen,” Isaac said, “I fell and shattered my elbow. I had to have two surgeries.”

 

He sat up and straightened out his arm, examining the scar. He put down his sandwich and pulled his shirt on.

 

“Playing hockey, or...” Stiles asked, going on basically the only thing he knew about Isaac’s childhood.

 

“Or,” Isaac confirmed. Stiles waited, for Isaac to invent some distraction, or change the subject but he didn’t. He just looked at the shore.

 

“Or?” Stiles repeated  


Isaac said, “My dad was trying to take me somewhere, and I was fighting him, and he dropped me. I landed on my elbow.”

 

Stiles hissed. “Shit.” Alarm bells were going off. What kind of father tried to physically force a fourteen-year-old to go somewhere? Where was it? Why was Isaac fighting him?

 

“It was fine,” Isaac said, “I got to miss a lot of school, and my dad basically left me alone for months.” The alarm bells were screaming now, but before he could formulate a response Isaac stood up and picked up his towel, shaking it towards the wind. “Let’s go,” he said finitely, “We need to shower.”

 

Stiles wasn’t the one who brought this up, and he didn’t have enough control of the situation to make Isaac sit down and continue the conversation. He stood up and picked up his towel. “Do you like, still have problems with it?” he asked, referring to the elbow.

 

Isaac bundled the towel under his left arm and showed Stiles the full extension of his right arm, which stopped before being completely straight. “I’m permanently fucked up,” he said. “Doesn’t stop me from doing anything though.”

 

“So not so fucked up,” Stiles suggested.

 

“No,” Isaac insisted, “still fucked up.”

 

* * *

 

 

Literally the next day Isaac almost got arrested.

 

Stiles had spent the night and day at work trying to figure out how to continue the conversation they started at the beach. He wasn’t sure what conversation he was trying to have, if what he suspected was anywhere near true, or any of his business.

 

Isaac never talked about his parents, his biological parents, and now the only nuggets Stiles had about his dad were _bad._ They’d been together almost two months now, surely he was supposed to be nosy enough to ask follow up questions. Right?

 

Or was he being a nosy bitch.

 

He didn’t have much time to consider it, because the next day turned into making sure Isaac didn’t get arrested.

 

They were walking down the street in Scott’s neighborhood, on their way to dinner at a sushi place because Stiles—despite being from California and being pretty well travelled—had never had sushi and Isaac was deeply offended by it.

 

Stiles walked almost ten feet before he noticed that Isaac wasn’t with him. He turned back and found Isaac standing in front of a parallel parked car, staring into the backseat.

 

“What?” Stiles asked. He doubled back and stood next to Isaac. “What?”

 

Isaac didn’t say a word. Stiles looked into the car and saw that a labradoodle was inside, pressing its face against the window.

 

Isaac muttered, “We need to get it out.”

 

Stiles looked around for the owner of the car and dog. “I mean, someone might be out in a minute,” he said. The windows of the car were cracked and Isaac reached out and touched the small part of the dog head that was accessible from the open window. The dog turned it’s head to lick his hand.

 

Isaac sucked in a quivering breath. “We need to get it out now.”

 

“Okay,” Stiles said, because this was important to Isaac, “Check the doors.”

 

All the doors were locked. Isaac stuck his hand in the cracked window and tried to push down but it made no difference. He grunted in frustration.

 

“It’s 95 degrees out,” he said, sounding panicked, “He could die. We need to get him out now.” Out of frustration he started kicking at the driver's side door and pulled at the car door handle.

 

Something was happening, something big and something that Stiles should understand but didn’t. Isaac was desperate, he was freaking out and not thinking clearly. Whenever Stiles reached towards him and touched him, Isaac pulled away from him and stepped closer to the dog.

 

“Isaac, let’s just call the police,” Stiles said, still looking around for any sign that someone owned the dog. “They can handle it.”

 

“The _police?”_ Isaac said incredulous, turning to Stiles, “What the fuck is wrong with you? The police don’t help with anything. We need to break into the car.” He kicked the car door three times, hard.

 

“Hey!” a voice behind them yelled. “Hey! Away from my car.”

 

Stiles turned around, feeling dread because, oh man, this was about to get so bad. The man walking towards them was wearing a worn-out suit. He had white hair and wire-rimmed glasses balanced on his narrow face. He was smaller than both of them, but more importantly, he was smaller than Isaac, and Stiles was sure he couldn’t miss the threat when Isaac stepped to him.

 

“Is this your dog?” Isaac demanded.

 

“That’s my _car,”_ the man said, his voice thin and reedy. He looked up at Isaac and stepped back.

 

“Your _dog_ is in your fucking car,” Isaac says, stepping close to him. “How fucked up are you? What the fuck is wrong with you?”

 

“I was only gone for five minutes,” the man insisted. He looked to Stiles, begging, “I was only gone for five minutes.”

 

Then Isaac _shoved_ the man, sending him stumbling back. There was murder in his eyes and Stiles felt his pulse flying. He never imagined grumpy, tired, annoyed Isaac looking like this. Stiles reached out for him, but Isaac pulled away.

 

“I’ll call the police!” the man said.

 

Isaac laughed darkly at him. “Go on. Call them. Tell them that you left an innocent dog in a boiling car.”

 

The man shook his head and stepped towards the car but Isaac stepped in front of him and shoved him away. “Give me the keys,” he demanded.

 

“Yeah,” Stiles said, stepping to Isaac’s side of the sidewalk.

 

The man hurriedly handed Isaac the keys and they watched as he unlocked the car and helped the dog out of the car. The dog barked happily and walked up to the man and started licking his shaking hands.

 

“See?” the man said desperately, “she’s fine.”

 

“No thanks to you,” Isaac said. “You think that’s okay? Locking someone up in a fucking metal box and leaving them to die?”

 

Then the worst thing happened.

 

A uni officer walked by them, hand on her belt. They must have been attracting attention, no doubt someone called and now they had to deal with the only cop in Chicago with nothing to do. “Is everything alright here?” she asked.

 

Isaac looked toward her, a wild look in his eyes, and he stepped back away from the man, away from the dog and car. Stiles tried to reach for his hand, but for the tenth time, Isaac pulled away from him.

 

“I would say not!” the man said, “These boys are harassing me. That one shoved me, twice!”

 

Stiles glared at the man. “Yeah, we were concerned because he left his dog in his car. Which is illegal, by the way, in this weather.”

 

The uni turned to the man, her focus now squarely on him. “Is this true?”

 

“It was only for five minutes!” the man yelled.

 

“Sir, I’m going to have to insist to maintain control of yourself,” the uni said. “It is illegal to expose a dog to extreme temperatures.”

 

“It’s illegal to assault someone,” the man countered, glancing at a glaring Isaac then quickly looking away.

 

“Would you like to press charges?” the uni asked with an unfeeling voice.

 

“Yeah,” Isaac said, “press charges.”

 

Stiles turned around in all directions. No, no, no, today was not ending with someone pressing charges against his Isaac.

 

The man paused then shook his head. “No, that won’t be necessary. I should say we should be finished with this dreadful affair.”

 

The uni nodded and turned to them, “You boys can be on your way,” she said, then turned to the man, “You, however, I have more questions for.”

 

Isaac nodded and grabbed Stiles’s hand and started walking fast in the other direction. They passed the sushi restaurant and they passed three blocks before finally, Stiles said, “Hey, we’re basically at Scott’s apartment. Want to go there?”

 

Isaac looked surprised, like he hadn’t expected to hear Stiles’s voice. He stopped walking and blinked, looking around them. “Sure,” he said quietly, “Okay.”

 

Stiles sighed. Everything happened so fast, he felt like he was barely there or knew what was going on. He felt like he finally had Isaac back. “Okay,” he said, “To Scott’s we go.”

 

At Scott’s, both Scott and Allison were home. Stiles was pretty sure Isaac had never been there before, but he beelined for the couch without saying hi to either of them and collapsed in one corner of the leather couch. Allison followed him wordlessly and sat cross-legged on the couch cushion next to him. She reached up and started stroking his hair. No one had said a word about what happened, Allison just seemed to know.

 

Stiles watched her, aware that he should be the one stroking Isaac’s hair, he should be the one fixing this and he should be the one sitting there when Isaac eventually stopped staring into space and started crying, doubling over and letting Allison rub his back.

 

“Dude,” Scott said quietly, “I’m going to make coffee. Come to the kitchen with me?”

 

Stiles nodded and followed him, keeping an eye on the situation in the living room as he went. He thought of how Isaac kept pulling away from him and wondered if even be able to help the situation right now.

 

Scott artfully got the coffee going. “So what’s up?” he asked.

 

“Um,” Stiles said, “So we were walking down the street, and Isaac saw a dog in a car and he started freaking out. He was yelling and kicking the car, trying to get the dog out, then the owner came and he shoved him, twice. Then a cop came, and we only got away because she’s definitely a dog lover who had no sympathy for the owner.”

 

From the kitchen, he could hear Allison speaking quietly and Isaac sniffing. Stiles was desperate to go into the living room to see what was going on, but the stayed in the kitchen.

 

Because he didn’t know what was going on. He’d never seen Isaac like that before. He didn’t think he was capable of it. Isaac’s emotions were always so level, he couldn’t get upset or angry about things that much, and he also didn’t seem to get that happy or excited. Then suddenly in the course of ten minutes, Stiles was sure that he would hurt someone, and now he was crying on Scott’s couch.

 

One thing he knew for sure was that it should have been him comforting Isaac, not Allison.

 

“I should go out there,” he said.

 

Scott shook his head, “Give them a minute,” he said. “They’re close, Allison’s been through this with him before.”

 

Fuck. “What do you know about it?” Stiles said, “Did Allison tell you something?”

 

Scott got mugs down from the cabinets, “Allison told me about her life,” he said simply, “Isaac is part of her life.”

 

“Anything you can tell _me?”_ he asked. “Get me out of the dark here? Did his dog die when he was a kid or something?”

 

“I don’t know,” Scott said, “But if I did know, it’s like, up to Isaac to tell you.”

 

“Okay,” Stiles said, “So I should go out there.”

 

“Give it a minute,” Scott said sagely.

 

They did. They listened to the sound of Allison talking too quietly to be understood, and Isaac’s breathing evening out. Finally, Stiles couldn’t wait anymore, and he took two mugs of coffee and went into the living room.

 

Isaac was sitting up and rubbing his eyes with the heels of his palms. Allison saw him coming and scooted over on the couch, giving him room to sit down next to Isaac. Who groaned and said, “Hey.”

 

He sounded exhausted.

 

“Hey,” Stiles said, and handed him one of the mugs of coffee, “Do you want this?”

 

“No,” Isaac said, and to Stiles’s alarm it sounded like he might start crying again.

 

“Oh shit,” Stiles said, “You don’t drink coffee. Look here, see,” he said, sticking the mug on the coffee table. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll drink both our coffees, and we’ll make you some tea.”

 

“We have tea,” Allison offered, “I’ll go make it.” She got up and headed to the kitchen, leaving them alone.

 

“Sorry,” Isaac said, rubbing his nose. “Sorry. I don’t really know what happened.”

 

“I know, it got a little out of control there,” Stiles said, “That guy was a major dick.”

 

“I mean,” Isaac said, “I don’t really remember. I was upset about a dog being stuck in a car,” he said, with some question in his voice.

 

“Yeah,” Stiles confirmed. “You were really upset.”

 

Isaac nodded. “I get upset sometimes.”

 

Stiles put his mug of coffee down so his hands were free. “Yeah, I get upset sometimes too.”

 

“Yeah,” Isaac said, “When I get upset though, it’s like, bad. I hurt people.”

 

Stiles tried to blow him off. “What, that? Dude, that was nothing. Don’t worry.”

 

“That was nothing,” Isaac agreed, “I’ve hurt people worse than that.”

 

Stiles started to say something, but Allison yelled from the kitchen, “Not in years!”

 

Isaac startled and laughed a little, but Stiles didn’t. “What do you mean you hurt people?” he asked.

 

“I get in fights. I’ve been to jail for it. I’m a bad person, Stiles. You shouldn’t be with me.”

 

Stiles just wanted to eat raw fish for the first time. He wished they could go back in time and walk on the other side of the street so Isaac didn’t see the dog so he wasn’t having to deal with this right now.

 

“You’re not a bad person,” Stiles said, “Dude, I’ve known you for months. You are not a bad person at all.”

 

“I am,” Isaac insisted. “If you haven’t been there, if that cop hadn’t come, I don’t know what I would have done.”

 

“You were just upset,” Stiles insisted, “Okay? People get upset about animals. You weren’t walking down the street looking to get into a fight, the dog triggered something in you—” Isaac flinched at his words but Stiles pressed on, “And you clearly had some kind of reaction, and shoving that guy was just part of it.”

 

“It doesn’t matter,” Isaac said, “I’m a bad person, okay? I don’t even know why you’re with me. You could be with someone so much better.”

 

Stiles made a desperate noise. It came out of him, uncontrolled. “Are you breaking up with me?” he asked. He couldn’t take that. He was sick of people leaving him.

 

“You should break up with _me_ ,” Isaac said.

 

“Okay well I’m not doing that,” Stiles said, “And since I’m _so much better than you,_ you have no right breaking up with me, so you’re not going to. Okay?”

 

Isaac was stunned. He didn’t flinch when Stiles reached up and put his hands on either side of his head. “I actually want to be with you, okay?” he said, “This isn’t by accident. I’m not going to find something out about you that’s going to make me change my mind.”

 

“You don’t know that,” Isaac said, “There’s a lot you don’t know.”

 

Stiles’s mind flashed to Isaac’s not fully extended arm the day before.

 

“And I’m fucking psyched to learn them,” he said.

 

He kissed Isaac and tried not to be too annoyed when Allison came out with tea, interrupting them.

 

It was true. He had just learned Isaac had been in jail for assault, but he didn’t care. He wanted to be with Isaac. The trouble was, he was a hippo hippo hypocrite because he was keeping more from Isaac than Isaac could possibly be keeping from him.

 

They took a lyft back to Stiles’ apartment to retrieve Isaac’s car. They were silent on the ride. Once they arrived at the building, they stood outside Isaac’s car, not staring at each other.

 

“I have a doctors appointment tomorrow,” Stiles said.

 

“For what?” Isaac asked.

 

“My asthma,” Stiles lied.

 

“Didn’t you see your asthma doctor a few weeks ago?” he asked, “Is something wrong?”

 

“No no,” Stiles insisted, “It’s just a new doctor, new environment, that’s all.”

 

“Okay,” Isaac said, “Let me know if you want to hook up later.”

 

Stiles waggled his eyebrows at Isaac, “Oh I will.”

 

Isaac flipped him off and got out of the car.

 

He didn’t know that Stiles was really seeing his psychiatrist because he acted weird about every reference to Stiles being mildly crazy, and having a crazy person doctor was too full on.

 

Stiles was a giant hippo hippo hypocrite who did not want to get dumped for being fully insane.


	14. Strategic Decision

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter features a lot of ableist and generally negative language about mental illness, coming from a character describing his own mental illness. It's one of those things where it's about oneself vs. about someone else which makes it different. It also contains a general description of a violent trauma.

Isaac woke up to his alarm and made the strategic decision to keep sleeping.

 

It was Thursday now, and he had to pick up Stiles at the train station in two hours.

 

But he had made the strategic decision to keep sleeping.

 

So fuck that.

 

His phone started blowing up at 5:37, two minutes after he would normally pick Stiles up.

 

Stiles (5:37): Were you not picking me up?

Stiles (5:37): No I can see in our text log that you were supposed to pick me up.

Stiles (5:42): Do I call you? Are you okay?

Isaac put his phone down and turned the volume off. He pulled the blankets up to his head and pushed his head into his pillow. His room smelled like citrus and the blankets were cool from the fan he had running next to his bed. He did not have to answer Stiles. Stiles was better off without him.

 

He didn’t fall back asleep, he felt too shitty to. He just burrowed his face in his blankets and pinched in inside of his wrist every time he thought of something bad. If Boyd wasn’t home he’d be smoking up right now, but he couldn’t deal with Boyd’s judgment on top of being the worst person ever fucking ever.

 

Sometime later there was a knock on his bedroom door. Isaac jolted and threw his blankets off. He stumbled towards the door and pulled it open.

 

“For fucks sake I’m asle—”

 

Boyd was at the door, with a strange look of concern on his face. It was so out of place that Isaac took a minute to make sure he wasn’t in the middle of a dream.

 

Boyd held up a pinched hand to his own wrist. “You’re doing that shit again? What’s up with you?”

 

“I’m not doing anything,” Isaac said.

 

“Uh huh. Well your boyfriend’s here.” Boyd inclined his head towards the living room.

 

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Why would Stiles come here? The last time they saw each other Isaac was out of control idiotic crying like a fucking little baby. Then he made up some excuse so that he wouldn’t have to see Isaac the next day, which _obviously_ he wouldn’t want to hang out with him anymore. He didn’t even know why Stiles thought that he would pick him up at the train. Obviously they had to be done.

 

Isaac never lost it in front of Danny. Danny knew about the fights in high school, witnessed some of them admittedly. He brought them up sometimes, when the fought, at the end. _“You’re either completely inhibited or totally impulsive and there’s no in between and it’s exhausting.”_ He thought that, and he never saw Isaac cry.

 

Isaac stepped back into his bedroom and closed the door over himself, leaving it open enough for Boyd to stick his head in. “You weren’t expecting him.”

 

“I forgot that he knows where I live,” Isaac whispered. “Can you get rid of him?”

 

“How?”

 

“Just be yourself.”

 

Boyd snorted. “He’s your boyfriend, you get rid of him.” With that he went into his and Erica’s room and shut the door.

 

Fuck.

 

Isaac considered going back into bed, but he heard Stiles’s voice ring across the small house, “Just so you know I heard all of that. Very, very, clearly.”

 

God damn it.

 

Isaac scrubbed his hands over his face. He was wearing nothing but boxers, Stiles couldn’t see him like this. Without really looking he grabbed a shirt off the floor and pulled on a pair of jeans. It didn’t matter what he looked like. Stiles wouldn’t want him anymore.

 

Taking a deep breath, Isaac walked out of his room and the two steps down the hall into the living room. Stiles wasn’t sitting on the couch like he had imagined. He was standing over the coffee table with his hands on his hips, looking seriously perturbed.

 

It was a new look. Isaac didn’t hate it.

 

But it didn’t matter because Stiles wouldn’t want him anymore.

 

“What?” he said.

 

“What?” Stiles repeated. “You were supposed to pick me up, and then you didn’t respond to my thousands of calls and texts. I didn’t know what happened. Anything could have happened and I had no idea what.”

 

“So what?” Isaac said, even though he wanted to apologize and tell Stiles that he would pick him up tomorrow and he wouldn’t sleep in like an inconsiderate dick and he was so, so, sorry he was so sorry.

 

Stiles gaped at him. “Oh my god. Is it opposite day? I had to take one of those share bikes here. Look at me, I’m sweating. I’m sweating all the way through my shirt. Like an idiot.”

 

“Sorry,” Isaac said, finding it ironic that that was basically the one thing that he wasn’t sorry for.

 

Stiles inhaled sharply. “What did Allison tell you? I know she told you something. That’s why, right? Why you’re done with me?”

 

What?

“Allison and I haven’t talked since the fourth. And you’re the one who is done with me.”

 

Stiles’s eyebrows shot up. “Excuse me? Moi? Done with you? Did my thousands of calls and texts give you that impression? I’m very invested in you, asshole.”

 

“But yesterday you made up an excuse not to see me.”

 

That was enough to get Stiles to sit down, a heavy sit with the full weight of his body hitting their shitty couch. “I had a doctors appointment. I told you.”

 

Isaac stepped further into the living room, but didn’t sit. “Yeah, that seemed like a total lie.”

 

“It _wasn’t._ It was just…a different kind of doctor. _”_

Well shit. Did Isaac just make the whole thing up in his head? He couldn’t have. There was no way Stiles would still want him after what he saw. Isaac lost his mind and assaulted someone then sobbed in his sister’s arms like a mentally ill person.

 

“Even if it was a lie,” Stiles continued, “which it _wasn’t_ , why would I text you last night to make sure you could pick me up from the train station? Wait, scratch that. Why would you tell me that you could if you were planning on ditching me? _”_

That’s true. When the texts came in from Stiles, Isaac stared blankly at his phone and just texted “Sure” in response to Stiles’s confusing texts about the next day.

 

“I thought you were just being polite.”

 

“Making a plan with the knowledge that I would bail would be incredibly rude. It would be a super rude thing for a person to do.”

 

“I get it.”

 

“Do you get it? I’m saying it was rude of you.”

 

“Jesus, yes, don’t be such a fucking dick.”

 

Stiles rolled his eyes. “I, like, don’t know how nice to be to you right now because I’m wanting to convince you that I still want to hang out with you, but also it’s not cool that you ditched me.”

 

“You still want to hang out?”

 

With a groan Stiles threw his head back. “Yes. You’re my boyfriend. Of course I want to hang out with you.”

 

That stopped Isaac dead in his tracks. Because they haven’t used those words before. So far they’ve just been people who hang out. Every day.

 

“You made a mistake. You called me your boyfriend.”

 

Stiles looked actually hurt. “I thought you were my boyfriend. Did I get that wrong?”

 

“No,” Isaac admitted, “No you didn’t.” He sat down carefully in the folding lawn chair next to the couch. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have ditched you.”

 

“Okay, and you did because you thought I wanted to break up with you? Isaac I cry, like all the time. There’s practically a cult following for my crying.”

 

“I didn’t just cry,” Isaac said, “I also assaulted someone.”

 

“Yeah a dick,” Stiles said, waving away the words carelessly. “Who cares if the guy was a total sociopath?”

 

“I try not to hurt people,” Isaac said, “But I do, sometimes.”

 

“Allison said not in years,” Stiles pointed out. “It’s not that I’m not concerned about the potential for violence, but I’m like, not concerned about it? That was clearly an escalated situation and you’d never hurt me, right?”

 

Holy shit. Why would Stiles just bring up his worst nightmare like that? “No, I would never. Honestly. Like, I’ve put a lot of thought into it and I wouldn’t. Ever.”

 

Stiles made a kind-of face. “Okay. Listen, I don’t know. I do things too. I’ve keyed more than one car in my day. And I used to commit crimes nonstop in high school, just to be a little mischievous dude.”

 

Isaac bit back a smile at the way Stiles talked about himself. Stiles wasn’t the same as him, he reminded himself. He wasn’t irrevocably fucked up. He probably never beat anyone up. Isaac had been working on being a better person, and part of that right now was not accepting Stiles’s acceptance of him.

 

“You don’t get it,” he said, “I don’t care enough about anyone. You know how I got my license suspended? That wasn’t just because I didn’t pay for tickets. It’s because when I get upset I go up to the lagoons and speed. Like, a lot. I’ve gotten a lot of tickets and they decided they didn’t want me driving. I had to go to traffic school. And—if I cared about other people I wouldn’t do that.”

 

Stiles frowned. “Okay, did you do it during the day when a lot of people were around?”

 

What was he, an asshole? “No, I only did it on my nights off. That’s usually when I get all messed up.” When there wasn’t work, and tasks, and things to do and he was alone awake in the middle of the night with the thoughts pouring in.

 

Stiles waved his hands. “Okay, so stop doing that. Easy fix. Fuck, Isaac.”

 

“I’m sorry.”

 

“No I’m sorry,” Stiles said, “You think you’re the only one with flaws in this relationship? I’m not some perfect stranger from the train, you know.”

 

“I know,” Isaac said.

 

“No I don’t think you do, otherwise you wouldn’t be acting like you’re some leper.”

 

“I’d be acting like this no matter what.”

 

“Listen,” Stiles said, “What I was afraid Allison would tell you is that I’m crazy, okay? I’m clinically insane. I have bouts of delusions and psychosis. So if we’re breaking up, let’s make it because of that.”

 

 

The words hit Isaac like air, like vapor, because he didn’t know what they mean. “You’re…you’re schizophrenic?” he asks.

 

“No,” Stiles said firmly, “It’s all tied up in my PTSD, or it was and now it’s just there. Sometimes I think there’s someone behind the mirror. Sometimes I think someone random is a murderer, or I’m a murderer or something. I don’t fit the diagnosis for schizophrenia, but—I’m like _crazy._ I’m on medication for it, and most of the time it’s fine, but I’m still fucking crazy.”

 

He looks at Isaac expectantly, like he was waiting for him to freak out or kick him out or something but Isaac didn’t want to. He didn’t know what he wanted to do. He’d never met someone with a mental illness before. Not one like that, where they didn’t know what was real and what wasn’t. He wasn’t scared, he wasn’t curious. He mostly wished he still didn’t know.

 

“Has it been happening since we met?” he asked. He was sure he would be able to tell if someone was crazy right next to him for months.

 

“No,” Stiles said, “It hasn’t happened in years. But it could happen any time.”

 

“Like now?”

 

“Well it’s not happening now, but yeah.”

 

Stiles stared at him. He was waiting and Isaac didn’t want to go wrong with this but it was _weird._ “Why didn’t you tell me this before?” he asked.

 

Stiles scoffed. “Why didn’t I tell some stranger on a train that I experience psychosis?”

 

“Why didn’t you tell your _boyfriend?”_ Isaac corrected.

 

Stiles threw his hands up. “Well we didn’t make that official until now. So I’m telling you now. Are you freaking the fuck out? Are you? I can tell from your face that you’re—”

 

“I’m not freaking out,” Isaac said. He doesn’t know if he’s lying. “So you just like, stop being able to tell what’s real and what’s not? Do you hallucinate?”

 

Stiles shook his head. “It’s just my thoughts. It’s just what I start to believe. It’s really scary.”

 

It sounded scary.

 

“You said it’s wrapped up in PTSD?” Isaac asked.

 

“Ah, yep,” Stiles said, “It’s kind of hard to explain.”

 

Isaac thought of all the people who have suggested that he has PTSD. The social worker in high school. Allison. His Dad. Even Erica, on bad nights has rubbed his back and said, “You know there are professionals for this.” He didn’t have PTSD—he didn’t. His shit wasn’t as bad as other peoples shit, and even though some of the symptoms he’s seen online were the same as his shit that didn’t mean he had it.

 

But Stiles did.

 

“You don’t have to explain,” Isaac offered.

 

“No I will,” Stiles said, “Um. When I was sixteen? You remember being sixteen right? It was a grand old time.”

 

When Isaac was sixteen he saw his father get hit by a car in front of him, he moved to Peoria with an aunt he’d never met, then stole her car and ran away to Derek. Sixteen was not a grand old time, but he didn’t say anything because he already knew it wasn’t a grand old time for Stiles either.

 

“When I was sixteen,” Stiles continued, “Scott and I went to say hi to my dad at the police station. Because my dad is—was, still is—the sheriff of Beacon County where I’m from. So we went to visit him and there was this guy? Who had just gotten out of prison and my dad had put him in there. No, he had put himself there, but my dad was the arresting officer and he blamed him. And he came back to my dad’s office and he uh, basically held us hostage. He uh, killed everyone else at the station. He got my dad to hand over his gun then he—um he tried to kill my dad and Scott…you know Scott?”

 

It took Isaac a minute to realize that Stiles was waiting for him to respond. “Yes,” he said, almost too shocked to speak. This is what he meant all those years by his shit not being bad enough for PTSD. Stiles’s shit was.

 

“Right,” Stiles said brightly, “You know Scott, because he’s dating your sister-person. Anyway, Scott stepped in front of my dad and he got shot. Um, trigger warning by the way? Sorry if this is too much.”

 

“It’s not,” Isaac said, “I mean it kind of….just thinking about this happening to you is a lot. But don’t worry.”

 

“Right. So that was bad. Then Montegaugh, that’s his name, which by the way no one else in the world has that name, um, you know he held the gun on us a little longer and I tried to keep Scott from bleeding out because he wouldn’t let Dad move. Then, uh, Montegaugh offed himself. In front of us.”

 

Isaac stared at Stiles. Stiles laughed. “So you know, that was that! Then I was actually fine for a few months. Then like, six months later, you know I started becoming convinced I was a serial killer who had killed three people, and started having you know, other symptoms of PTSD and it was. I went to the hospital and they diagnosed me and put me on the good good meds.”

 

 

Isaac didn’t know what to say. So he didn’t say anything. Stiles found a tissue box Erica put on their side table and starts ripping apart a tissue. The sat in silence for a few minutes. Finally something came to Isaac, something to say.

 

“That’s fucked up,” he said.

 

Stiles laughed. “Thank you,” he said, “I think so too. So when I say I get you freaking out, I get it.”

 

Isaac considered. “That isn’t the same as my shit. My shit is my fault.”

 

Stiles started to say something then stopped. “Okay, but haven’t you gone through something bad?”

 

Isaac froze.

 

First of all, no he hadn’t. Not like Stiles had. And second, how could he tell?

 

“Why would you say that?” he asked, and he knew his voice was sharper than he wanted it too be, too defensive.

 

Stiles shrugged. “I don’t know man. I mean, I shouldn’t have assumed. But you were adopted when you were seventeen and I can’t think of a situation where that wouldn’t have involved some stuff happening beforehand. And the way you reacted to the dog, and you have—you have—”

 

“Scars?” Isaac cut him off. “You think because I’ve bled before I obviously have something wrong with me? I was a two sport athlete, hockey has put me in the hospital before.”

 

That was only one time though and the other stuff put him in the hospital more than once. But he wasn’t talking to Stiles about that.

 

“Okay,” Stiles said, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. So I just explained all of this for nothing.”

 

Fuck. “It wasn’t for nothing,” he said, “I’m sorry. I mean I— _fuck—_ I’m glad you like, told me and shit. But I haven’t gone through anything like you have.”

 

“Okay,” Stiles said, “So tell me the truth. Are you too freaked out to keep going out with me?”

 

Isaac knew he was supposed to immediately say no, no he wasn’t. He was supposed to tell Stiles that none of this gives him any qualms, but it does. He didn’t understand mental illness at all. He didn’t know if he wanted to. And what if Stiles has an episode or whatever while they’re together? How was he supposed to react?

 

“That pause tells me a lot,” Stiles said.

 

“You just gave me a ton of information,” Isaac defended himself.

 

“Information that could lead to you breaking up with me,” Stiles said in a rush, “Okay? I get that. I just gave you the entire bad bag off shit that comes with dating me. I talk a lot too, okay? And I’m obsessed with being right. And I get totally wrapped up in things and forget that other people have needs and it sucks. There. Break up with me.”

 

Isaac rubbed his face. This is why he didn’t want to pick Stiles up at the train station. “Are you kidding me?” he says into his hands. He scrubbed his face and dropped his hands. “You should break up with _me._ I’m negative as hell, and I _hit people,_ and I’m a total douchebag when I’m not too tired to do anything but complain, which is always by the way. I complain nonstop. People tell me I’m exhausting to be around. And I’m fucked up too. I have nightmares. I—”

 

He stopped. “You should break up with me,” he repeated.

 

Stiles laughed. “Okay,” he said, “So obviously we have to break up with each other. Except I don’t care about those things. I already know you’re a Negative Nancy. It’s hilarious. Do you want to break up with me because of my shit?”

 

No. No he didn’t. He was a little scared but he didn’t.

 

“No,” he said, “I don’t want to break up with you.”

 

Stiles clapped his hands once, loud. It made Isaac jump. “Shit. Sorry. I think we’ve been like, having fun and messing around with each other but I think we were doing it kind of as train buddies? You know we still didn’t know that much about each other. I think this was probs good, you know? Now we’re more than train buddies.”

 

Isaac smiled. “I want to be more than train buddies with you.”

 

Stiles nodded. “Okay, so can you get over on this couch and kiss me already? If that’s okay? Because that’s what more than train buddies do.”

 

Isaac got out of the chair and came to sit next to Stiles on the couch. He angled his body towards Stiles, and slipped his arm behind Stiles’s back and neck. He leaned forward and Stiles joined him in a kiss. It’s warm and real and it feels the same as it did a few days ago, because he knew things about each other. Or he knew things about Stiles. Stiles knew just enough about Isaac not to be scared.

 

He just hoped they could keep it that way.


	15. The Dads

Summer in Chicago was violently humid. Stiles’ hair, already wild on the best of days, stuck up and stayed there as if kept in place by the water molecules in the air. He pushed the limits and wore cargo shorts and a short sleeve button up shirt to work, and got pulled into Ellison’s office for his troubles.

 

“Stiles,” Ellison said, disappointment coloring his voice. “I expected better from you.”

 

Stiles looked at his legs, half covered by green cargo shorts. “Better from me in what sense?”

 

“I thought you wanted to be something in this company,” Ellison said, “You have to respect the company culture.”

 

Ellison was wearing a three piece suit for his part, which definitely wasn’t the company culture. But Stiles was smart these days and he knew better than to point that out. He also knew better than to point out that nothing he had said or done in his time at Slate at all indicated that he wanted to be anything to the company.

 

He wasn’t half done with the work Ellison had given him, and no one seemed to notice. He spent half his days waiting for Isaac to wake up so they could start texting. It didn’t escape his notice that Isaac was waking up earlier and earlier. He blamed the sun, daylight savings, but Stiles knew it was so they could talk more.

 

“Um,” Stiles said, “I’m sorry. It won’t happen again?”

 

Ellison nodded. “See that it doesn’t, yes? I’m rooting for you, son.”

 

The cheesy grin on Stiles’ face froze. He didn’t like anyone calling him son except his own dad. But he would deal with it for that sweet, sweet, Slate money that was currently accumulating for a down payment on a car. As much as he loved having Isaac drive him around, it was getting high time for him to be able to take himself to the Jewel.

 

His own dad continued to call him every day, but most days he was with Isaac until nine so he didn’t call him back until after Isaac left. Dad made a deal about it, even though it was always seven or eight in California when Stiles called, so it wasn’t like he was being _rude._

 

“I don’t understand what you’re up to,” Dad said, “You used to call me every day at seven your time. What are you doing now?”

 

Stiles took a deep breath. He was out to his dad, but he’d never been in a relationship with a guy so it was mostly a theory to dad. It wasn’t like he told Dad about his club hookups in Sweden.

 

“Um,” he said, “well that’s something we should actually talk about. I’m in a relationship.”

 

“Oh,” his dad said, sounding a little disappointed. Which Stiles saw coming. Dad was among the people who thought his serial monogamy was a bad thing. Stiles didn’t really get _why._ His relationships made him happy. For the most part.

 

“Who is she?” Dad asked, “Someone from work?”

 

“Um,” Stiles said, “ _he._ Who is he. And he’s not from work. I met him on the train.” Dad was silent for just a moment too long and Stiles launched into defending himself. “Listen, I know that it seemed like I’d never be with a guy, right? So shock, awe. Wow. But listen. It’s totally good and healthy and going really really really well.”

 

“Stiles, I’m not bothered that you’re dating a man,” Dad said, “I’m surprised that you’re in a relationship and you didn’t tell me anything before now. How long have you been with him?”

 

“It’ll be two months in a week?”

 

Dad sighed. “Damn it Stiles. Should I be concerned that you hid this from me?”

 

“No,” Stiles said, “Totally no. I hid it from Scott too?”

 

“Why?”

 

“Um,” Stiles said, “You guys just get all concerned about me. And it’s totally nice! And I totally get why. But I thought you might like, find something wrong with him, or with me, or with him and me, and I couldn’t take that. It makes me really happy. I don’t want to be pathologized for being in a relationship.”

 

“I won’t pathologize you,” Dad said, “I just want to know basic information about your life. We talk every day, I don’t know how you hid this from me.”

 

Easily? “Okay, what do you want to know?”

 

“Well for starters, what is his name?” Stiles hesitated. What if his dad has the power to look up the arrest record he knows Isaac has? “Stiles!”

 

“Okay hold on,” Stiles said, “You have to promise not to look him up if I tell you.”

 

“Well now I’m definitely going to look him up,” Dad said.

 

“Then I’m not telling you his name,” Stiles said seriously.

 

“I’m coming out in two weeks for your birthday, are you telling me you are going to hide him from me when I’m there?”

 

“Yes, if you don’t agree not to look him up,” Stiles said.

 

“This is doing nothing to assure me that things are fine and safe between you,” Dad said.

 

“Okay,” Stiles said, “okay. Um good things first okay? He is really sweet and hecka smart and he’s totally skilled! He’s a baker and he makes me bread on Saturdays which is so fuc—very sweet. He loves the Civil War in this weird way, like he’s obsessed with this one regiment in Indiana that I guess was the last to do battle in the war? I don’t guess, I mean I know that for sure because he’s told me multiple times. And he listens to podcasts all the time so he has random knowledge at all times. He’s really close to his dad, which is a good sign, right? And he’s Allison—Scott’s girlfriend—he’s her bother so if we both get married to them we’ll be actual brothers, which is really cool.”

 

“I thought you said you met him on the train?” Dad said.

 

“I did,” Stiles said, “It was a big old coincidence. No one could get over it.”

 

“And you didn’t think to tell me?”

 

“Ah, no?” Stiles says.

 

“Okay, what is the bad thing?” Dad asks.

 

“Um,” Stiles says for the tenth time, “He has a record?”

 

“You have a record,” Dad said flatly, like he didn’t even care.

 

“A juvenile record!” Stiles defended himself, momentarily unaware that he was digging himself and Isaac a hole in the ground, “Isaac has a real adult record!”

 

“A record for what?” Dad asked. It was probably better that Dad hear it from him, so he could explain it, rather than cold hard facts on a database.

 

“Ah, speeding? For one? But he is actually a very safe driver, trust me. And um, I think he told me possession? But just of pot! No big deal! And um,” this is the hard one, “assault. But that was years ago.”

 

Dad was silent.

 

For a while.

 

“Assault,” he repeated. “What did that entail?”

 

“I’m not sure,” Stiles admitted. “He just told me it was years ago, and he tries not to hurt people now.”

 

“Oh that’s really reassuring,” Dad said sarcastically.

 

“It is!” Stiles said. He didn’t think it would be great to tell the story of the man with the dog and the restraint Isaac showed, so he just insisted, “Isaac is a really good guy. I swear. He’s awesome. You’re not going to look him up, are you?”

 

“I’m starting to wonder if I should find a way to.”

 

Stiles let out an aggravated noise. “This is why I didn’t want to tell you!” he said. Then something awful occurs to him. “I don’t want you to tell me what you find,” he said.

 

“Stiles,” Dad said flatly.

 

“No, I’m serious,” Stiles said, “He’s telling me things piece by piece, okay? I don’t want a sneak preview that takes that autonomy away from him.”

 

He seriously suspected that Isaac was abused, but he didn’t want to find that out from Dad reading an arrest report, or something else. He didn’t know who, or when, or what happened, but there’ve been enough indicators that Stiles is almost sure. From the fact that he was adopted at seventeen, to the fact that he only once referenced his family to tell Stiles they were all dead. To the scars. That looked more than accidental. Stiles wasn’t sure if he was in foster care, or what and he didn’t want to ask. He hoped Dad wouldn’t tell him.

 

“If there is something that concerns me, I’m telling you,” Dad said.

 

That probably wouldn’t include what Stiles didn’t want to know, he reasoned.

 

“Okay,” Stiles said, “Promise you’ll keep in mind that he’s a hecka great guy and I really like him?”

 

“I will,” Dad promised. “And you promise that you’ll introduce him to me when I come to town for your birthday.”

 

Keeping that promise required that Stiles tell Isaac that his dad was coming to town.

 

Which he did, a couple hours into hanging out with Isaac the next day.

 

They were at the park district pool, but neither of them were swimming. Stiles wasn’t sure why they paid $4 to come in—the sundown rate. Isaac was wearing swim shorts and one of his black Jeanne’s t-shirts and had his right arm thrown over his eyes. They were the only ones at the pool, aside from a quiet family sitting on the other side of the pool, out of earshot.

 

“So,” Stiles said, “Big news. My dad is coming to town.”

 

Isaac took the arm off his eyes. “Oh?” he said.

 

“Yeah,” Stiles said, encouraged. “Because my birthday is in two weeks? And he wants to meet you.”

 

“Oh,” Isaac said, in a completely different tone of voice. Disappointed, almost put off.

 

“Oh?” Stiles repeated.

 

“Do you want me to meet him?” he asked.

 

“Yes that’s exactly what I want you to do,” Stiles said. “You’re my boyfriend, that’s what boyfriends do.”

 

“Parents don’t like me,” Isaac said.

 

“That’s ridiculous.”

 

“My own parents didn’t even like me,” Isaac said, sitting up with a grunt.

 

Stiles felt a white hot spike in his chest. There is was again. He thought of his dad who no doubt that looked Isaac up by now and would tell him any results that concerned him when Stiles called him after Isaac dropped him off at home.

 

“Your dad is obsessed with you,” Stiles argued, “And what, your ex’s parents didn’t like you?”

 

“No,” Isaac said, “They really, really didn’t.”

 

“My dad is going to love you,” Stiles said, “Because I—” he stopped himself before he slipped up, “I like you a whole bunch, and so therefore he has to.”

 

Isaac frowned doubtfully. “Your dad is a cop, right?”

 

Stiles’ heart sank. “Yeah,” he said.

 

“So he could look me up in some cop database?” he asked.

 

Damn Isaac was sharp. “Um, yeah, he’s probably going to.”

 

Isaac swore. “Damn it, why is your dad a cop?”

 

“County sheriff actually,” Stiles offers, “Not that it matters.”

 

“Fuck,” Isaac said, “He’s going to tell you to dump me. You should dump me.”

 

Stiles groaned. “We’ve been over this. I’m not going to dump you.”

 

“What, ever? You’re going to marry me and stay with me till we die?”

 

“Maybe!” Stiles shrieked, “Maybe not if you keep insisting I dump you at every sign of trouble.”

 

“Your dad,” Isaac said slowly, “Is going to tell you that I’ve been arrested three times for assault or battery. And he’s going to tell you that I’ve been arrested twice for possession, and once for failing to appear. He’s going to tell you that I’m a petty criminal, and that you should dump me.”

 

“Jokes on you asshole,” Stiles snapped, “I already knew all that.” Isaac rolled his eyes. Stiles decided to take a risk. “Is there anything else he might find? Like, from when you were a kid?”

 

“I don’t have a juvenile record, unlike some people,” Isaac said without much humor.

 

“Okay, but like anything else?”

 

“Like what?” Isaac demanded.

 

“I don’t know, like your parents getting arrested or something?”

 

Isaac stared at him. “My parents—as far as anyone was concerned my parents were some of the best people in my town. They never got arrested. What would they even get arrested for?”

 

 _Hitting you_ , Stiles didn’t say, _making you the kind of person who can’t sit on the inside of a train bench, and loses all sense of composure when he sees a helpless animal trapped._

“Um, I don’t know, drugs?” Stiles floundered.

 

“You think my parents did drugs,” Isaac said.

 

“Well you do drugs!”

 

“Yeah, but my parents didn’t,” Isaac said, “God, have you been thinking I’m the child of criminals this whole time?”

 

Kind of? “No,” Stiles said, “I’m sorry. I was just like, trying to cover my bases.”

 

“Your dad is only going to find what I said he would,” Isaac said, “And then he’s going to tell you to dump me.”

 

Isaac was in a _mood_ for the rest of the night and they never ended up swimming. He kissed Stiles dutifully when he dropped him off outside his apartment building, but drove off before Stiles got to the door.

 

Fuck.

 

He called his dad and braced himself. “Okay, what did you find?” he asked.

 

“It’s what you said,” Dad said calmly, “Possession, failure to appear and assault. You don’t get arrested for speeding, you get arrested for not going to court for your speeding tickets.”

 

“Thank you for that explanation,” Stiles said sarcastically. “And I already know his license was suspended for a couple months.”

 

“Yes,” Dad said. “Do you know the nature of the assaults?”

 

“Um, no,” Stiles said, “But I have a feeling you’re going to tell me? Even though I asked you not to? ”

 

“The first one,” Dad said like he hadn’t spoken, “Was when he was eighteen. It was ‘Jewel’ which the internet tells me is a grocery store, and the police report says that your boyfriend punched a man who he said was ‘yelling his fucking head off’ at a child.”

 

More evidence.

 

“The second one,” Dad said, “Was when he was twenty, and occurred what the internet tells me is a gay club. Seven other people were involved. The third one was by far the most serious. Your boyfriend reportedly saw a man grab a woman, and subsequently put him in the hospital.”

 

“You keep saying ‘your boyfriend’” Stiles said, “Like, what’s the point of that?”

 

“I’m trying to emphasize that this a person who you choose to be in a relationship with,” Dad said.

 

“Are you not seeing that these are totally sympathetic cases? Like, he was defending a helpless kid, and someone who was being harassed. He probably just got swept up in someone else’s fight with the gay club thing. He’s a good guy.”

 

“You have managed to go through life without assaulting anyone,” Dad pointed out.

 

“Dad,” Stiles said, “I called in a bomb threat when I was in high school.”

 

Dad practically gasped. “Stiles that is not the same, you were mentally ill you were—”

  
“Exactly,” Stiles says, “There’s more explanation than can be provided in police reports. If Isaac’s dad looked me up, he’d want me to dump him.

 

“He wouldn’t,” Dad insisted, “Everything you were arrested for was just because you were mentally ill.”

 

“Stealing a police van? Holding a lawyer’s kids hostage? Not really, Dad.”

 

“You were a kid,” Dad said, “Isaac wasn’t.

 

“Eighteen, twenty,” Stiles said, “Not exactly aged.”

 

Dad sighed. “I don’t want you getting involved with someone who could hurt you.”

 

“Everyone could hurt me, Dad,” Stiles said, “Isaac having a brief, not totally unsympathetic, history of hurting people doesn’t make him more of a risk to me than anyone else.”

 

“Actually it does,” Dad said, “I’m going to be nice to him. I promise. But that doesn’t mean I’m not worried.”

 

“I’m not worried,” Stiles said, “Does that count for something?”

 

“It does,” Dad acknowledged. “You know I worry about you.”

 

“I know,” Stiles said, “I kind of wish you wouldn’t so much.”

 

“I’m working on it,” Dad said, “Could you just tell me things from now on? So I don’t find out all at once?”

 

“I’m working on it.”

 

* * *

 

 

As if to one up him, Isaac texted him the next day and said “my dad wants you to come to sunday dinner.”

 

Stiles stepped into the bathroom and called Isaac, something that they’d never done before. At least not when Isaac answered the phone.

 

“Why does your dad want me to come to dinner?” Stiles asked. “Why now?”

 

“Because he’s inviting Scott, and it’d be rude not to invite you,” Isaac said matter a fact. “He was always going to invite you eventually.”

 

“But why now?”

 

“Because you’re my boyfriend and he wants to?”

 

Stiles was silent for a moment. “Do you forgive me for yesterday?”

 

Isaac sighed. “Listen. Whatever. Okay? Yes. We just have to get you ready for Sunday.”

 

“Get me ready?”

 

“What, did you think my dad was easy to impress?”

 

 

For the rest of the week Isaac sporadically went over talking points for the dinner. He helpfully identified what Stiles should and should not talk about.

 

“He’ll like that you went to college,” he said, “So that’s good. Talk about that. He doesn’t like Star Wars—I know!—so like, talk less about that?”

 

“Helpful,” Stiles said sarcastically, “Does he—I mean is he cool with me being me?”

 

Isaac furrowed his brows. “You being you?”

 

“Me being a guy,” Stiles clarified.

 

“Oh,” Isaac said quietly. “Yes, he's cool with it.”

 

“Are you sure?” Stiles asked.

 

“Yes, I’m sure,” Isaac said, “Don’t you think he would have killed or disowned me by now if he did?”

 

Stiles felt his eyebrows shoot up. Those were two extreme options that he had not considered for a second. He was a little alarmed that it was even on Isaac’s radar.

 

“I mean, I’m thinking more microagressions?” he said. “Subtle hints that he doesn’t approve?”

 

“Oh,” Isaac said, sounding confused, “No. He is totally fine. My dad isn’t a shitty person.”

 

Stiles chose not to point out that Isaac had spent days coaching him on how to impress his dad. He didn’t have a leg to stand on, because all Isaac knew about his own dad was that he had looked Isaac up in a federal database. Which wasn’t cool.

 

When the day came, Isaac explained that it was his turn to come over early and do food prep which meant that they got to Isaac’s dad’s apartment for at four for a six thirty dinner. But first Stiles came over to watch Isaac make rolls.

 

Coming over was new.

 

Today was full of new.

 

“Are you sure I’m allowed inside?” Stiles asked, standing at the threshold of the front door. Isaac rolled his eyes and grabbed the front of Stiles’ shirt and pulled him into the house.

 

Also in the house was Erica, from the party, who was smoking pot on the living room couch. She squealed when she say Stiles and beckoned him over. “Come!” she said, “Imbibe.”

 

Stiles waved her off. “No thanks,” he said.

 

“Does your job drug test?” she asked.

 

“No,” Stiles said, “It just makes me paranoid.”

 

Isaac lowered his eyebrows. “It does?” he asked.

 

Stiles thought back to his confession a few weeks ago. “Yeah, it does,” he said.

 

“Do you need her to stop?”

 

Erica laughed loudly. “Yeah, do you need me to stop?” she asked in a tone that suggested that he better not ask her to stop.

 

“No no,” Stiles said, “Go on. I’ll just hang out in the kitchen.”

 

“Okay,” Isaac said, “I’m just going to,” he gestured to Erica then went over and took the blunt—joint?—out of her hand and took a deep drag. He coughed as he handed it back to her. “That should do it for me.”

 

“Are you sure?” he asked.

 

“I was smoking before you came,” Isaac confessed.

 

They headed into the kitchen, a closed off narrow room with a side door and a litter box. An orange cat was on the counter, and jumped off when they walked in. For all Isaac talked about food sanitation, that struck him as gross as hell, but Isaac didn’t comment. On the counter was a bowl covered in saran wrap with a mound of dough inside.

 

“So have you ever smoked?” Isaac asked. He took the saran wrap off the bowl and violently punched the dough. He picked it up out of the bowl with both hands and threw it on the clean counter.

 

“Yeah,” Stiles said, “In college, some. I did live in Amsterdam, for a while. But I never liked it. It made me all twitchy and upset.”

 

Isaac looked at him mournfully. “That sucks,” he said, “I can’t believe you can’t smoke pot. Can you take downers?”

 

“Do _you?”_ Stiles asked. He didn’t think Isaac’s drug use extended past pot.

 

“I did some, a couple years ago,” Isaac said, “Not as good as pot.”

 

“Um, I’ve been prescribed them before,” Stiles said, “They aren’t great for me either.”

 

“Sucks,” Isaac said emphatically.

 

“I actually don’t super need drugs?” Stiles said, “Well I do, but not that kind.”

 

“I do,” Isaac said easily.

 

“Are you going to be high at your dad’s apartment?” Stiles asked, “Because I need you to be sharp! I need you to have my back!”

 

Isaac shook his head. “I won’t be high by the time we leave,” he assured Stiles.

 

Except he took three hits before leaving and asked Stiles to drive.

 

“I’m sorry,” he said, clenching the rolls to his chest. “I’m nervous. That won’t actually make me high.”

 

Isaac ate one of the rolls on the ride to his dad’s house, and ate two more while they walked up the six flights of stairs to the seventh floor. Stiles didn’t ask why they weren’t taking the elevator.

 

“Are you mad?” Isaac asked.

 

“I’m not,” Stiles said, “I’m mostly freaked about not letting you and your dad down.”

 

“You can call him Chris,” Isaac reminded him, “He’s nice, most of the time.”

 

At the door Isaac used a key and lets himself in. “Chris we’re here!” he yelled.

 

“In the kitchen,” Chris says loudly.

 

It was weird that Isaac let himself in like that. What if his dad was doing something?

 

In the kitchen Isaac set down the plate of foil covered rolls. Chris lifted the foil and peeked underneath, then took a good look at Isaac.

 

Then took a good look at Stiles.

 

“You’re not stoned,” Chris said to Stiles, perfectly serious.

 

Stiles practically jumped. “No! I’m not. At all.”

 

“Do you not smoke, or is it just because you are meeting me?” Chris asked.

 

“I don’t smoke,” Stiles said in a rush, “Like ever.”

 

“Does it bother you that he does?” Chris asked, maintaining full eye contact. Stiles met it, because he basically had no choice.

 

“Um, no?” Stiles said, not sure what the right answer was. “Does it bother you?”

 

Chris looked at him, considering, then turned to Isaac. “We are making salmon and asparagus,” he said, ignoring Stiles’ question entirely. “Is that fine?”

 

Isaac nodded. “That’s fine,” he said.

 

“You’ll eat salmon?”

 

“I’ll eat salmon.”

 

Chris nodded. Then, after a moment of thought he turned to Stiles, “Will you eat salmon?”

 

“I’ll eat salmon.”

 

“Good.”

 

Stiles didn’t have a job, per say, during prep. Isaac made a marinade and Chris did something impressive with the asparagus then it was time for the salmon to marinade so Chris suggested they sit down in the living room with some drinks.

 

“Do you drink?” Chris asked Stiles, making the same kind of eye contact.

 

“Yes,” Stiles said decisively. Isaac isn’t going to get _more_ high so he could drive home and Stiles can totally, totally drink. “I definitely drink.”

 

Chris poured him a healthy scotch with whiskey stones in it, and they sat.

 

Isaac turned around and looked at the dining room table. “I chose that,” he said.

 

“You told me,” Stiles said, “At the party.”

 

Isaac furrowed his brow. “Oh. I did?”

 

“You did,” Stiles said.

 

“Oh yeah,” Isaac said, “I totally did, didn’t I.”

 

“Well,” Chris said diplomatically, “It is a good table. Worth mentioning twice.”

 

“Oh totally,” Stiles gushes, feeling like he made a mistake by pointing out that Isaac was stoned then and he’s stoned now so yes he forgot that he already told him about the table. Even though he didn’t directly point that out. “Yes. Great table. Where’d you get it?”

 

“The antique mall where I met Allison,” Isaac says, “It’s fu—it’s great. It’s a great mall. It’s still around if you want to go sometime.”

 

Stiles was not much for antiquing but Isaac’s dad was staring at him so he said, “Oh yeah, totally.”

 

Isaac brightened.

 

“Stiles,” Chris said, “How is your job going? Data entry at Slate?”

 

“Um,” Stiles said, “Same as ever? Really, really boring. I feel like my brain is atrophying every day that I’m there.”

 

“You should pursue a different line of work then,” Chris said.

 

Stiles felt compelled to agree with him, even though he really did agree with him and think that Slate sucked. “Ah, I’m saving for a car. Slate pays better than anything else I’ve done, so I’ve gotta get a car first then I’m in.”

 

Chris frowned. “Isaac told me you have a four year degree from a good school. Surely you can get a well paying job on your own?”

 

Isaac had talked to his dad about him? Now Stiles felt like shit for basically only telling his own dad about Isaac’s criminal record. God he was a shitty boyfriend.

 

“Yes,” Stiles said, “I do have a four year degree. But it’s in Anthropology. Not a ton to do with that unless you go to grad school.”

 

“Will you go to grad school?”

 

Stiles looked sideways at Isaac. They’d never talked about this. It was something that Stiles always thought he would do once he was stable enough, and he was, now. He didn’t know what he wanted to go to grad school for except that he loved learning and he loved school and he wasn’t ready for it to be done when he collected his last credits at the community college in Beacon Hills and graduated without a ceremony.

 

“I don’t know?” Stiles said.

 

“If you think that is the only way to secure a financially stable future, then you should consider it,” Chris said, not unkindly.

 

“I know,” Stiles said. He’d had this conversation with his dad. It was weird to have it with Isaac’s dad. He seemed genuinely concerned about Stiles’ ability to support himself. Maybe because he was concerned about his ability to support Isaac, in the future? Could he already be thinking of that? That couldn’t be. He didn’t even know if Chris liked him—he might be pissed if he knew that Stiles had taken to calling him Chris in his brain. For all he knew, Chris was just good at being intimidating and nice at the same time, and he really hated Stiles.

 

“I just got to Chicago though,” he said, glancing at Isaac, “And I think I want to stick around for a while.”

 

Isaac beamed at him.

 

“Yeah,” Stiles said. “So, how’s the gun business?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! I am going to be taking a brief break from posting for the holidays and to catch up on content. If you aren't already subscribed and want to stay on top of when this is next posted maybe subscribe now. I'm looking forward to writing some fresh chapters and getting them to you soon.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading this piece that's been in the works for literal years! It is set in a highly fictional Chicagoland and is a hard AU, both of which is already evident. Thank you to Goddess of Birth for reading it for those literal years and being super supportive all the time!! 
> 
> Comments are SO APPRECIATED!


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